WITH S 
INTO ^ 




CI 

FORTIEiR JO ME 





.aA"*^-^ 





Class 
Book. 



COPMRIGHT DKPOStr. 



WITH SERBIA INTO 
EXILE 



WITH SERBIA INTO 
EXILE 



AN AMERICAN'S ADVENTURES WITH 
THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 



BY 
FORTIEH JONES 



ILLUSTRATED WITH 
PHOTOGRAPHS 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1916 






Copyright, 1916. by 
The CENTUHy Co. 



UAOB IN u. a. A. 

AUG 19 1916 



TO 

THE MEMORY 

OF 

THK CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 

THIS BOOK 
IS RKVKKEN'JLV L)KL»ICA J KU 



'Grow old alony with me! 
The br»t i« yet to be . . , 



TABLE OF CONTEXTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 3 

II THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 52 

III EVACUATION SCENES 74 

IV GETTING AWAY 96 

V SPY FEVER 140 

VI ALONG THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 176 

VII ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 205 

VIII BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 245 

IX PRIZREND 290 

X THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 301 

XI OVER THE MOUNTAINS 351 

XII WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 392 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Pf-.r.y. 

Serbian i^easanb* fleeing from their homes before the 

approaching Gennarui Frf/nlit'puce'^ 

Miss YAf.n'h fiftsnian expedition 6^ 

A Bofcnian refugee b<jy 15 

Soldiers frona tFie Drina trenches receiving their daily allowance 

of bread 1> 

A Serbian peasant's home ■i'J 

A bridge built by the Romans at Ouchitze and still in perfect 

condition .'i8 

A Cheecha and his dwelling. One of the numerous gnards 

along tiie Orient Railway 65'^ 

Wounded Checchas being transported to a hospital . . . . 65^ 
A Cheecha flashing army dispatches by means of a heliograph 63 
We arrived at the Colonel's headquarters wet, cold, and very 

hungrj' 92"^ 

Refugee family from the frontier driving all their possessions 

through a street in Valjevo 92 '^ 

"A man does not die a hundred times," said the Little Sergeant 101" 
Mme. Christitch distributing relief supplies at Valje^-o . , . 101 -^ 

TTie refugees at Chupriya 111'^ 

Tichomir and some of his relatives 118-^ 

General Putnik, Serbia's oldest general, and a popular hero . .118*^ 
Misses Hebby, Spooner, and ilagnassen in the author's car . . 127"^ 

The departure became an exodus 1.50 

Serbians about to be shot as spies by the rictorioas Austrian? . 1^7 

R^shka in the vallej' of the Ibar 167-^ 

Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia 186"^ 

.\ f ter the blizzard in the Ibar vallej' 186 "^ 

A silhouette against the hills mo%-ing as in a pageant . . . 305*^^ 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Long trains of oxen were pulling tlio big guns from the camps 

along tlie wayside -13 

In manj' places on Kossovo swift torrents swept across the road 213 
Kossovo stretdied away in the dreariest expanse imaginable . . 224 

Now and then the storm lifted its snow veil 224 

Last night I found no shelter, but followed tlic ox-carts to a 

camp outside tlie town 241 

A group of transport drivers 267 

What liad been a country was now a desert 267 

Where the Bulgarians threatened the road 285 

King Peter of Serbia 303 

Prizrend from the river bank 30.'? 

Soldiers of Serbia 318 

Tlie army that cannot die 327 

A Serbian gun just before it was bhiwn up at Ipck .... 341 

Tlie beginning of the mountain trail above Ipek 3j6 

Trackless mountains of Albania '.^6,1 

A mountain home in Montenegro 365 

Albanians of the type who murdered the refugees 37X 

"Mon chey Capitaine" 376 

King Peter and a party of refugees crossing a bridge in the 

Albanian Alps 385 

The only street in San Giovanni di Medua 396 

The forty British women of the Stobart mission waiting for the 

boat at Plavitnitze 396 

The ancient fortress at Scutari 405 

Admiral Trowbridge speaking with English women in front of 

the British consulate at Scutari 41£ 

Albanian chiefs assembled at Durazzo to aid Essad Pacha 

against the Austrians 43'3 



WITH SERBIA INTO 
EXILE 



WITH SERBIA INTO 
EXILE 

CHAPTER I 

BATTLE LIXES AT PEACE 

I HAVE to thank a man on a Broadway ex- 
press for the fact that at the close of Septem- 
ber, 1915, I found myself in a remote valley of the 
Bosnian momitains. The preceding June this 
person, unknown to me, threw a day-old newspaper 
at my feet, and because it fell right side up, I be- 
came aware that men were wanted to do relief work 
in Serbia. In an hour I had become a part of the 
expedition, in a week I had been "filled full" of 
small-pox, typhus, and typhoid vaccines and 
serums. Three weeks more found me at Gibraltar 
enduring the searching, and not altogether amica- 
ble, examination of a young British officer, and 
within a month I was happily rowing with hotel- 
keepers in Saloniki, having just learned in the voy- 
age across the Mediterranean that submarines were 

3 



4 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

at work in that region. With a swiftness that left 
httle time for consideration the next few weeks 
passed in camp organization at Nish, in praying 
that our long-delayed automobiles would come, and 
in getting acquainted with a country about which I 
had found but httle trustworthy infoimation in 
America. 

Then because an English woman, Miss Sybil 
Eden, with the intrepidity and clear-sightedness 
which I later found characteristic of British women, 
decided that relief must be carried where, on ac- 
count of great transportation difficulties, it had 
never been before, I spent six wonderful weeks 
among the magnificent mountains of Bosnia at the 
tiny village of Dobrun. 

On a certain day near the end of this sojourn my 
story of the great retreat properly begins. I sat 
chatting with a Serbian captain of engineers 
beside a mountain stream six miles behind the 
Drina River, where for almost a j^ear two hostile 
armies had sat face to face, watching intently but 
fighting rarely. It was a beautiful day, typical of 
the Bosnian autumn. The sunshine was delight- 
fully warm and drowsy ; the pines along the rugged 
slopes above us showed dull green and restful, 
while the chestnut-grove near which we sat show- 




5 — 

:l § 



p;l 



BATTLE LIXES AT PEACE 7 

ered hosts of saffron leaves into the clear stream at 
our feet. Overhead an almost purple sky was 
flecked with fluffy clouds that sailed lazily hy. 
Peace filled the Dobrun valley, peace rested un- 
naturally, uncannily over the lengih and breadth of 
beautiful Serbia, and our talk had been of the 
preceding months of quiet, unbroken except for 
vague, disturbing rumors that were now taking 
more definite form and causing the captain grave 
concern. 

On the other side of the little valley ran the nar- 
row-gage railway which bridged the roadless gap 
between Vishegrad, on the Drina, and Vardishte, 
the frontier post between Serbia and Bosnia. It 
was down-grade all the way from Vardishte to 
Vishegrad, which was fortunate, for the Austrians 
had smashed all locomotives before they retreated, 
and Serbia had been unable to get any more over 
the mountains to this isolated little railway. As 
we talked, two large trucks thundered by loaded 
high with the round, one-kilogram loaves of bread 
that were baked at Vardishte, and thus sent down 
daily to the men in the Drina trenches. Ox-teams 
had laboriously to pull these trucks back again to 
the bakeries. A truck filled to a wonderful height 
with new-mown hay for the oxen at Vardishte now 



S Wnil SKIUUA INTO EXILE 

st(H)(I on n sidino- lo k'l (lu" l)rt>a(l-tr:iiii o'o by. It 
looki'd voiv niK'cr l)cini>' pulled niont;' the railway 
track Wkc a rann-wai»i)n by ten teams of hiii»c oxen. 
l''rom I ho army blacksmitli's shoj) near by came the 
|)k>asant soiiiul of rinnini»' steel as the peasant 
smiths I'nshionetl shiK's for the eavahy horses, and 
the steady rat -tat -tat o'l liammers eame from down 
tlie river where t!ie army eni^ineers with the simplest 
sort o{ tiH>ls were eo!istruetini>' a ])ermanent bridge 
to replai-e the one destroyed l)y the retreating 
enemy. Some rcM'iiLjee children, in iillhy rags anil 
suffering from scurvy, splashed about in the creek, 
shouting and laughing as if there were nothing in 
all the world but sunshine and sparkling water. It 
was hard to think that less than six miles away, be- 
yond two thin lines o^ trenches and a rushing river, 
the sway o'i the i>reat Avar lord bcLiran and stretched 
unbroken lo Herlin, 

The e\ ening before we had gone down to Vishe- 
grad to see the trenches. One always had to 
eho(\se the darkness for these visits, because the 
Austrian guns from an impregnable position across 
the river commanded all approaches to Vishegrad. 
Only under cover of the night were we allowed to 
venture in, although Serbian soldiers came and 
went throughout the davlight hours by devious 



battlp: lines at peace o 

paths known onJy to themselves. To get there one 
had to mount a hand car — "wagonette," the officers 
called it — take off the brake, and sit clear of the 
handles. Starting at a snail's pace, we soon gath- 
ered very creditable speed, and shot through tunnel 
after tunnel without lights, but whooping at the 
top of our voices to warn any unwary pedestrian 
who might be on the track. 

Along the beautiful mountain gorge we sped, 
sometimes by the river-bank, sometimes hundreds 
of feet above the torrent, along walls of solid ma- 
sonry built up from the bottom of the canon. The 
stars came out, and a full moon was rising over the 
eastern mountains as we flashed through a last long 
tunnel and brought the car to a stop in a weed- 
grown railway yard. The commandant of the 
place and a group of officers welcomed us in sub- 
dued tones, and we set off down the rusty tracks 
toward the town. Thoughtlessly a companion 
stuck a cigarette into his mouth and struck a match. 
No sooner had it flashed than a large hand slid over 
his shoulder and crushed the flame, while an officer 
in polished French begged that monsieur would 
forgo smoking for a little while. Brief as the flash 
of light had been, this request was punctuated by 
the whiz of a rifle-bullet overhead and a distant 



10 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

report on the forbidding-looking slope on the oppo- 
site side of the river. 

Stepping carefully, we came to the railway sta- 
tion, a large building that had just been completed 
before the war began, but now a pile of emi)ty walls 
through many jagged holes in which the moonlight 
poured. 

We came into what had been the town. In the 
moonlight it looked just like Pompeii. Whole por- 
tions of it had been pounded to ruins in successive 
bombardments, but now and then, due to the con- 
formation of the terrain, patches of buildings had 
escaped uninjured, being out of range of the high- 
perched Austrian guns. There was deathly silence, 
which we dared not break except with guarded 
whispers, and distantly the rush of the Drina could 
be heard. 

Beckoning me from the rest of the party, a former 
resident of Vishegrad, a druggist, led me up a side 
street and by a back court into a ruined apothecary 
shop. Here I could use my pocket flash-light to 
advantage. For months the shop had been unoccu- 
pied, yet there was a curious appearance of the pro- 
prietor having just stepped out. After demolish- 
ing the houses that adjoined it, a shell of large 
caliber had burst in the front entrance of the shop. 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 11 

All the well-filled shelves at that end were blown 
to splinters, and drugs and glass were scattered 
over the place in a fine powder. But on the jagged 
end of one of these shelves a large bottle of pink 
pills stood jauntily, and below it hung a barometer 
filled with purple liquid, absolutely untouched. 
There was a glass case of tooth brushes standing in 
the center, with debris piled two feet deep around it. 
On the prescription-counter at my right a set of 
druggist's scales stood, delicately balanced, some 
unfinished prescription in one pan and weights in 
the other. Hanging from the torn edge of the ceil- 
ing a pulchrious maiden in strong flesh tints hailed 
the rising sun, across the face of which the name of 
a German shampoo was spread, while she luxuri- 
ously combed straw-colored locks of great abun- 
dance. I flashed the light here and there, revealing 
these curious freaks of chance, and suddenly just 
at my feet I saw something gleam white. I 
stooped, and picked up a small handkerchief of 
filmy lace, crumpled as if it had been tightly 
gripped in a little hand. As I shook it out a faint 
odor of violet perfume rose, bringing as nothing 
else could the sense of tragic change between the 
tense moments of Europe at that hour and those 
far-off, happy days when youth and lace and violet 



12 \VI Til SKUIUA INTO KXILE 

|)ii rimu' Willi lluMi- c'Miclcss wny iD^clhcr through 
the streets t)t' N'i.shcurail. 

KniLM-^iiig into tiic ruined, nioouUt street, we 
t'ouud our party hail chsappeaied, but just ahead 
were two of our soliHers. With tliese as guides, 
we stole with iuereasiug eare to a spot near the 
ri\er-I)ank wliere some trees east a bhielc shade. 
I'^roin tliis vantage-point we eould see elearly the 
aneitnt stone l)ridge about one hundred yards 
away. It is a. beautiful bridge, more llian tive hun- 
dred years old, ami t-onsists oi* eleven arehes, whieh 
evenly deerease in size from the middle one until 
they melt into solitl masonry on eaeh bank. The 
eentral arehes were blown away at the beginning 
of hostilities, and in the moonlight the two remnants 
jutleil out into the river like facsimiles of the fa- 
mous pile at Avignon. 

Later in the evening, when I dined at a sheltered 
house less than two hiuulred yards from the Aus- 
trian trenehes, in a eomfortable sitting-room, I 
smokeil Austrian cigarettes anil drank beer from 
Sarajevo while a companion played ^Vmeriean rag- 
time on a grand piano. At the same time, I fancy, 
behind the .Vustrian trenches the olHcers were 
smoking Serbian cigarettes and drinking Serbian 
wine. For until a day or so previously there had 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 13 

been a truce lasting several weeks, and across the 
gap in the hlown-up bridge the two hostile com- 
manders had exchanged delicacies and greetings 
by means of an old tin pail hung on a rope. New 
troops had come to the other side, however, and 
the truce had ended as suddenly as it had begun. 
At the approach to the bridge a guard was always 
kept, and to shield the men, while changing this 
guard, a rough wall of corrugated iron had been 
constructed for about fifty yards from the end of 
a trench to the sheltered position on the bridge. 
Toward this barrier we now crept until we were 
leaning against it and could peep over at the river 
just below us, dimly across which we could see the 
earthworks of the Austrians, where we knew silent 
watchers were tirelessly waiting night and day, 
alert to kill some enemy. It gave one a peculiar 
feeling, that sense of myriads of human beings 
peeking at one another behind dirt banks with 
rifles poised and fingers on the triggers. It is the 
new warfare, the sort that this war has brought to 
high perfection. 

My interest was such that I leaned too eagerly 
upon my sheltering sheet of iron. With what I 
am sure is the very loudest clangor I shall ever 
hear, it tumbled away from me, and fell into the 



It WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

river. The elasli eehoed and reechoed throimh the 
silent town and np the valley. If I had pulled 
Sehonhrnnn crashing down about my ears, I could 
not have felt more conspicuous. ^Vlso 1 became 
aware that I was stanilino- up there in the moon- 
light with nothing whatever between mc and war, 
and I lost no time in placing the rest of the wall 
between that stern reality and myself. The oppo- 
site bank was as silent as before; not a ritle rang 
out. The soldiers in the trenches near by did not 
know wliat to make of it, but we soon had another 
}Mcce of iron in the place of the one that had fallen. 
One of the sentries said he supposed it made such a 
dreadful row that the boys across the way thought 
some trick was being played on them. 

Such tricks as this were more or less common. 
On one occasion, after two or three weeks of ab- 
solute quiet, a violent artillery and rifle engage- 
ment was precipitated when some Serbian wags 
tied tin cans to the tails of two dogs, and set them 
oil' down the trail in front of the Serbian trenches. 
The dogs kicked up a great noise for a couple of 
miles, and the Austrians, thinking an attempt to 
cross the river was in progress, rained shot and 
shell for hours along the two-mile front, while the 
Serbians sat snugly in their trenches. The dogs 




A Jlo.sriian i<-iij^f;o [;oy 




;t!lo\v;trK-f; 



of breafl 



UATVLK LJXKS AT I'KACE 17 

wn- unliurl.. Also, if r^nc was to f>cli(:vc n;]>ort, 
tlic (.orrjrriandant af; Vishe^rad knew to a nicety 
wfiat was i^oin^ on in th(; crif^my trenehes. Kvery 
otfjcr nip^lit an Auslriarj oiViccv of \i'\jj)\ rank was 
sair] tf> row across the river at a secluded spf>t and 
rri/ike a fuJI report to the Serbians as to the number, 
nationah'ty, and intention oi' the forces in his 
irencljes. It is quite reasona}>le to heh'eve this is 
true, and also that the Austrians were equally well 
irj formed as to what went on in Vishegrad. 

After dining with the commandant, we were 
asked if we would like to see a "potato hall," which 
the soldiers and village maidens were holding at a 
small caf'' irj one of the islands of safety. Xr^lhing 
could have been more bizarre than a f^all, even a 
"potato hall," in that crumfding city, so we ac- 
cepted the invitation with interest. Again we 
sneaked through the melancholy streets, making 
detours around huge holes that bursting shells had 
dug and piles of debris from fallen buildings. 
We entered a large, square room janrimed full of 
people except for a clear space in the middle. 
Heavy black cloths draped all openings, so that no 
ray of light shr)ne outside. Everything was shut 
tight, causing the air to grow vile, full of cigarette 
smoke and the odor of the dim kerosene lamps that 



IS W nil SEUIUA INTO KXILK 

liL;iitt(l tlic place. At one ciul ol' Ihc room a joHy- 
lookiiii»', niiiUUc-a^ncd wonuiii bent over a stove, 
iiijikini;- Turkish eoiVee which she dispensed copi- 
ously. On our entrance she came forward, secured 
us chairs, and sniilinoly brought us trays of her 
very excellent coffee. 

The hubbub had stopped when the officers ap- 
peared with us, and I looked about on the silent, 
curious faces that peered at nie. They were mostly 
young- soldiers and girls. iVinong the latter I rec- 
ogni/ed some who had come to our relief statit)n 
the day before destitute of food and clothing. 
^lany of these young people, clinging tenaciously 
to the ruins of their homes, were the last remnants 
oi' families that the w^ar had blotted out. The sol- 
diers had the nuid of the trenches on their clothes, 
and on their faces the smiles of young fellows out 
for a night of it. A little way across the river the 
enemy watched, or perhaps they, too, were dancing, 
for the width of a trench does not change human 
nature. ^Vt a few words from the officers, the 
leading spirits overcame their diffidence and forced 
the old tiddler, who sat on the back of a chair, with 
his feet on the seat, to strike up a favorite dance. 
The boys fell into line, and, passing the group of 
girls, each chose a partner for the simple, crude. 



BATTLE LTXES AT PEACE 19 

happy (lance that followed. Plaintively pounding 
out the rhythm, the fiddler fiddled, perspiration 
poured from the gallant young soldiers, the maid- 
ens' faces flushed with the quickened dance, the 
atmosphere grew unbearably hot and heavy, and 
shrill, care-free laughter filled the room. So l*ier- 
rot danced his brief hours away in the stricken city. 

In the small hours of morning we made our weary 
march back to Dobrun, for it was up-grade now, 
and easier to walk than to work the hand car. 

Talking to the captain there on the river-bank, 
I remarked that this year of peace in war seemed 
strange to me. When first I came to Serbia in 
.July I had heard a rumor of a great Teutonic 
drive through the country. Mackensen had massed 
half a million men along the Danube, it was 
said, and German troops were coming. The Aus- 
trian commander would lead, and the way to Con- 
stantinople up the Morava valley would be opened 
with Jjulgaria's aid. But everj^where things were 
quiet. Along the Save and the Danube affairs 
might not be so sociable as at Vishegrad, but were 
just as peaceful. As I knew her last summer, 
Serbia was a land of pleasant places. There was 
still destitution among her refugees, but the traces 
of war were fast being obliterated. Yor sl year she 



20 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

had been resting, merely toying with war, building 
up her army in every possible way after its won- 
derful victory against an invading force that out- 
numbered it three to one. 

A few weeks earlier, at Semendria, now immor- 
tal in Serbian history, I had lunched in full sight of 
the Austrian guns. I recall the sleepy medieval 
street, the beautiful Danube, with vineyard-draped 
banks, yellow with sunshine, purple with grapes. 
I remember, wuth a feeling of unreality now, the 
charming, simple hospitality of the prefect as he 
came to greet us, perfectly attired in morning cos- 
tume, and offered us a good lunch of the dishes of 
old Serbia, with excellent wine. I was motoring 
on an inspection tour with Mr. Walter Mallory, 
leader of the Columbia University Relief Expedi- 
tion, and ]M. Todolich of the Interior Department, 
supervisor of Serbia's gendarmerie. These gen- 
darmes, because of certain disabilities, could not 
serve in the regular army, but were drafted into 
the police force. When destruction fell on Bel- 
grade, it found the trenches held mainly by these 
men who could not be real soldiers. They held 
those trenches for two horrible days while fire fell 
like snow on the city, held them until there were no 
trenches to hold, and those that were left fought 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 21 

the enemy through the streets of their beautiful 
little capital. From home to home they retreated 
until none was left to retreat, only piles of blue- 
coated bodies that with the thousands of dead civil- 
ians littered the streets. They knew they could 
not hold the city. It was merely a delaying action 
until the army could take up new positions, one of 
those rear-guard engagements so common in Bel- 
gium and France when the Gei-man army was 
sweeping on, in which the men who stayed behind 
faced sure defeat and certain death. 

It was just about two months before this hap- 
pened that we three, with a Serbian interpreter, 
left Nish at three o'clock one morning in the midst 
of a violent storm. There was a gale blowing, and 
rain was falling in solid sheets as our car pluckily 
splashed through mud above the axles on the road 
down the Morava valley to Alexinats. Motoring 
in Serbia is a strenuous occupation. If one makes 
forty or fifty miles a day, one has done well. 
Shortly out of Nish, one of our mud-guard sup- 
ports snapped, and could not be mended. It meant 
that the whole guard had to come off, and that 
meant some one must "get out and get under" to 
unscrew the taps. For a mile we dragged along, 
looking for a dry place. There was no such thing 



22 Willi SKKIUA IN rC) KXILK 

in Serbia nl llu- iiuxirmI, 1 tliink, so at last I 
onnvli'd mulcr llic car aiul did the job, lying" in 
slusli several inebes deep ^vbieb did not improve 
my ap[)earanee. INI. Todolieli spoke not a word of 
lsnt»lisb >vben we started, but, after a few blow- 
onts, earburetor troubles, etc., be bad learned some. 

"How is it MowT' Mallory would frecpiently ask 
uie, and my sborl "All riybt" seemed io amuse INI. 
Todolieb greatly. Soon at eaeb slop be was 
[)ipini>': 

"I low ees it naw, Cuspodin Vones? Awlrigbt, 
vhr 

1 knew next to notbing about tbe inner mysteries 
oi' an automobile, but am sure 1 imj)ressed our 
Serbian guest witb tbat "All rigbt." Soon be be- 
came exasperating as troubles increased and muddy 
disappearances under tbe ear became more fre- 
quent. "Awlrigbt, awlrigbt," be would peep over 
and over again, as if it were tbe greatest joke in 
the world. Once, Mben 1 was at tbe wheel, we 
were starting down a very steep incline, and com- 
ing to a sharp "switchback," the brakes did not 
hold, and I had to take the hair-pin turn at an 
awful speed. For ii minute the car simply danced 
on its front wheels along the edge of a high cliff. 
Then I got past the curve and into the road again. 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 23 

I glanced back, and saw "Nick," our interpreter, 
hanging far over toward the landward side, tongue 
sticking out and eyes staring; but M. Todolich was 
huddled unconcernedly in his corner, and flung 
out "Awlright" at me, as if I had n't scared us all 
to death. 

After a while the rain stopped, and we made 
good time on the perfectly level road that runs 
along the broad floor of the Morava valley, which 
many ages ago served as an easy highway for the 
Third Crusade. For miles on each side stretched 
smooth fields of Indian com, small grains, and 
magnificent truck-gardens. Despite the primitive 
methods of agriculture, the Morava valley, which 
runs almost the length of Serbia, is one great garden 
plot, and is as beautiful and fertile as the valley of 
the Loire, in France. Last summer, viewing this 
valley and its lesser counterparts along the Mlava, 
the Timok, and in the Stig country, the possibility 
of famine in such a rich land seemed too remote to 
consider. There were many workers in the fields, 
but all were women and children. It was they who 
gathered the ripened corn into the primitive ox- 
carts, reaped with scythes the waving wheat and 
rye, or plowed with wooden shares the rich, black 
loam. Women drove the farm stock along the 



24 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

highways, women filled the market-places in every 
village, and women for the most part waited upon 
us in the cafes. Almost the only men we saw were 
the lonely cliccchas sparsely scattered along the 
railway to guard the bridges from the spies that 
lurked everywhere. We passed many prosperous 
villages in which, with the exception of the scarcity 
of men, life seemed to move on as prosaically as in 
times of peace. We stopped and looked over the 
large sugar mills at Chupriya, now silent on ac- 
count of the war and the scarcity of labor, and we 
passed some of Serbia's best coal-mines. Finally, 
at dusk, we came to Polanka through a narrow 
road where the mud was so bad that we had to be 
hauled out. 

The inns of Serbia are never luxurious and not 
always clean. The one we' found at Polanka was 
no exception. ]Mallory and I shared a room on the 
ground floor. It had a single large window over- 
looking the sidewalk at a height of about seven 
feet. We retired early and, being worn out, slept 
soundly. I w^as awakened next morning by 
"Nick's" unmusical voice, saying, "JNIeester Yones, 
eet ees time to get up." A minute I lay in bed 
rubbing my eyes, trying to recall where I was, then 
I decided to take revenge on ^lallory. 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 25 

"Mallory," I shouted, "get up at once! Don't 
you know it's terribly late?" 

But Mallory was already dressing*. I cast a 
glance about the room, carelessly at first, then with 
an interest that quickly turned to anxiety. 

"Mallory," I sternly demanded, "where are my 
clothes?" He looked up unconcernedly, took in 
the room at a glance, and shrugged his shoulders. 

"Why, how should I know? I 'm not your 
valet," he said. "Look behind the wash-stand or 
under your bed. The rackiya we had for dinner 
may have been stronger than I supposed." 

Loath as I was to admit this insinuation, I 
looked, but with no success. Then I gradually re- 
membered where I had placed them the night be- 
fore, but I would not admit the horrible suspicion 
that arose. 

"Mallory, if you do not produce my trousers at 
once, I '11 cable the President. A man of your 
age should know that a sovereign American citizen 
cannot suffer these indignities in foreign lands 
without — " But my ultimatum was cut short by 
Nick, who thrust his ridiculous head in at the door. 

"Meester Yones, the hotel maid wants to know 
eef thees ees yours," he happily interrogated, hold- 
ing up a garment. "And, een addition, thees and 



26 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

thees and thees," and he held up in turn certain 
other garments, including my coat. "She says she 
found 'em scattered along for two hundred yards 
down the street outside your window. She says she 
hope you had nothing een your pockets, for there 
ees nothin een them now." 

"This is not all, Nick," I screamed. "You have 
more, say you have more, or I am lost. Where are 
my trousers, Nick? Tell the maid to go down the 
street again, farther down the street, and see if she 
cannot find a pair of khaki trousers. Maybe they 
are hanging on a tree or on somebody's wall. 
They must be somewhere; they wouldn't fit any 
one but me." 

"How ees everything? Awlright, eh?" M. 
Todolich drifted into the door, demurely, then 
stopped in amazement at the sight of me waving 
my incomplete costume about and entreating Nick. 

The interpreter explained to him my situation, 
whereupon he grew greatly excited. What, an 
American Guspodin had his trousers stolen and 
that, too, when he was traveling with the chief of 
gendarmes. Outrageous! He would call the 
mayor at once, and order the gendarmes to make 
a thorough search of the town. No visitor from 
America should be able to say that he could not 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 27 

safely leave his trousers wherever he wished in 
Serbia. Then he shouted down the hall, and 
brought to the scene of my humiliation the hotel 
proprietor, his wife, his daughter, the maid, the 
valet, and the cook, so that precipitately I souglit 
refuge under my sheets. He soundly berated the 
hotel-keeper because he had not personally stood 
guard over my trousers all night, made scathing 
remarks about the citizens of Polanka, and not once 
allowed himself a remark as to the mentality of 
people who hung their clothes in open windows on 
ground floors. 

"Send for the mayor at once," he ordered, "and 
all the gendarmes." This was too much. I saw 
the haute monde, the elite, and the rank and file of 
Polanka convoked around me trouserless. I 
sensed the mayor's stupefaction at his city's deep 
disgrace, and the gendarmes' merciless fury as 
they made a house to house search for my khaki 
trousers. 

"Nick," I weakly implored, "please, Nick, per- 
suade the old gentleman to let the matter stand. 
Tell him I was going to throw them away. Tell 
him it was my fault; probably the wind blew them 
somewhere. Tell him anything you like, Nick, but 
don't let him start a riot. I did n't lose my money. 



'JS Wnil SKHHIA IN TO KXILK 

S() it docs nt inattir. \ lui must go to a ^shop ris^ht 
away ami i;vt mo a \rA\v o\! soldier's trousers. 1 
have always wanted some, any wax. Anil. Niek, 
elear this nuih out oi' my niom!" 

Somi Niek's ever-reatly liin^ue straightened mat- 
ters out, and 1 hail a brand-new pair oi' soldier's 
trousers. \Vhen 1 was dressed 1 walked the street 
that had been bedeeked w itli my wardrobe, and saw 
a t'amiliar-liHiking doeument tlultering in the gut- 
ter. 1 raced for it. and with a sigh tueked it into 
my pocket, for it bore the seal of the United States 
and "requested" whomever it might concern to let 
me freely pass. 

From Volanka we had come next day for lunch 
at Semendria. and after a pleasant chat with the 
prefect and his son. a very likable young fellow 
with hapin- manners, we took the road to Belgrade. 
For tifteen or twenty kilometers the way ran on 
the bank of the Danube, there being barely room 
for a tirst-liiic trench between it and the river. 
Three hundred yards away the Austrian trenches 
were in plain sight across the river, though some- 
times masked behind willow-trees. Leaving Se- 
mendria by way of the old fniit-market. where 
were for sale at very low prices unlimited quanti- 
ties o( white and purple grapes, huge plums, large 



EATTr.E TJXES AT PEACE 29 

r<:(\ a\)])\(:s, ii^H, pears, and fine peaehes, we were at 
ODoe exposed lo Ifje fire of the enemy's cannon. 
Only there was no fire, 'llic ^^urjs were there, the 
trenches, and the rnen, hut uner^neernedly we sailed 
along for an liour, flauntlrjg our ear in their faces, 
as it were, without calling forth as much as a rifle- 
shot. 'J'his was disappointirjg, for we had heen 
told that they seldom let autfjmobiles pass without 
taking a pot-shot or two, arjd for the first time since 
comirjg to Serhia we had seemed in a fair way for 
a war thrill. '^J'he Serf^ian trench was deserted ex- 
cept for sentries at great intervals, hut higher ujj in 
the vineyards, on the other side of us, were more 
trenches and, beyond these, dug-rjuts where the sol- 
diers lived. 

Now on another such day, two months later, sud- 
denly a rain of shell began on that town and stretch 
()i' road. It corjtinued for forty-eight hours urjtil 
there was no town and no road arjd no trench. 
'J'hen across that quiet, beautiful river men put out 
by fifties from the Austrian side in large, flat-hot- 
tomed boats and, confident that nothing remained 
alive on the other shell-torn shore, made a landing, 
^rhey were met by men who for two days had sat 
crouched in dug-outs under an unparalleled fire. 
'J'he fighting that ensued was not war de luxe, with 



30 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

all the brilliant, heartless niechanisiiis of modern 
war. It was with rifle and bayonet and bomb and 
knives and bare hands, and it raged for a long time, 
until finally the enemy was driven back across the 
river, leaving more than a thousand men behind. 
Only at Posharevats did they cross. The rear- 
guard at Semendria was nearly annihilated but it 
won the tight. An eye-witness, writing in the 
"Nineteenth Century," gives this description: 

There was no demoralization amongst the survivors in 
the river trenehes. For tliat the Serbian temperament 
has to be thanked, whieh is perhaps after all only the 
temperament of any unspoiled population of agricultural 
peasants that live hard lives and have simple ideas. The 
effect of the bombardment had rolled off them like water 
off a duck's back, and they set to in the twilight and 
bombed and shot the landing parties off their side the 
river with great energy and application. 

So that was what was hanging over the sunshiny 
piece of road that we so blithely sped along, while 
the two prosaic-looking battle-lines watched each 
other across the Danube — at peace. 

In the late dusk we came to the heights behind 
Belgrade, and looked down on the lights of the city 
strung along the Save and the Danube, while just 
beyond the river the towers of Semlin gleamed in 
the waning light. London and Paris were dark 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 31 

every evening last summer, but Belgi-ade, always 
within range of the Austrian guns, was lit up as 
usual. 

With the exception of the section along the rivers 
that had been bom})arded during the first invasion, 
and one hotel on the main street, which a shell had 
demolished, Belgrade might have been the capital 
of a nation at peace. The street cars were not run- 
ning, but in such a little city no one missed them. 
We ran up a very rough street and placed the car 
in the yard of a private residence. Then M. Todo- 
lich took us over to his home which, when the capi- 
tal was removed to Nish, he had had to lock up and 
leave like all the other government officials. One 
could see the pride of the home-loving Serb as he 
showed us over the charming little villa built around 
a palm-filled court where a small fountain played. 
Belgrade being the only one of their cities which 
the Serbs have had time and resources to make 
modern, I found them all very proud of it, with an 
almost personal affection for each of its urbane 
conveniences. With great enthusiasm monsieur 
showed us the mysteries of his very up-to-date 
lighting and heating apparatus. 

"All the Serbian homes must be so some day 
when peace comes to us," he said earnestly. His 



32 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

was typical of many homes in Belgrade before Oc- 
tober 6. 

In a fairly good hotel we spent the night. ^ly 
window overlooked the Save, from the moonlit sur- 
face of which, as stark and melancholy as the ghost- 
ship of the "Ancient ^lariner," jutted the great, 
black steel girders and tangled iron braces of the 
blown-up railway bridge. Now and then a dim 
light traveled slowly along the water on some tiny 
boat that, manned by English marines, was pa- 
troling the water-front of Semlin. 

I was awake early next morning and, dressing 
hurriedly, went out into the brilliant August sun- 
shine. The air was wonderfully clear and bracing. 
Newsboys cried along the streets, which many 
sweepers were busily at work cleaning. Nothing 
but peace in Belgrade! Searching out the auto- 
mobile, I found a curious audience around it. 
There was ^litar, twelve years old, as straight as a 
young birch, with blue-black hair that fell in soft 
curls to his shoulders, and jetty eyes that peered 
with burning curiosity into every crevice of the 
motor, which he feared to touch. His beautiful 
body was tightly clothed in a dull-green jersey and 
white trousers that ended at the knees and left bare, 
sturdy legs very much bronzed. And there was his 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 33 

little brother, Dushan, age seven, with still longer 
hair, but a dark brown, large hazel eyes, pug nose, 
and freckled face, furnished with a toothless grin, 
for he was at that exciting age when one loses a 
tooth almost every day. He stood behind his big 
brother and admonished him not to touch the car. 
In the seat, bravest of the lot, saucy, impudent, 
naughty, sat Milka, age five, dressed in a blue wisp 
of cloth that left tiny throat and arms and legs bare 
to the summer sun. She had hold of the wheel, 
and was kicking at the foot-levers in wild delight, 
quite obviously driving that battered Ford at ten 
thousand miles a minute. But when suddenly she 
heard the step of the funny-looking American, one 
screech of laughter and fear, and Milka, like a 
flying-squirrel, was safe on the doorstep, demurely 
smiling. I tried to coax her back, but could not. 
Even when I lifted the hood, and Mitar danced 
about with excitement at sight of the dirty engine 
thus disclosed, and Dushan stood with eyes of won- 
der, Milka remained smiling at me, poised for flight. 
As I worked about the car, a woman came out of 
the house toward me. I heard her light step upon 
the paved court and looked up. She was dark, not 
very tall, but dignified and wonderfully graceful, 
as all Serbian women are. Smiling pleasantly, she 



34 AVITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

offered me on a tray the inevitable shlatko. This 
is a time-honored custom in Serbia, and is ob- 
served very generally, though, of course, as West- 
ern ideas come in, the old customs go. When a 
guest comes to a Serbian home, the hostess — always 
the hostess in person — brings in a tray with pre- 
served fruits. On it are spoons, and the order is 
for each guest to help himself to a spoonful of 
shlatko, place the spoon in a water-filled receptacle, 
and take a glass of water. Then Turkish coffee 
follows, and a liqueur, usually plum brandy, from 
the home-made store which every Serbian home 
keeps. It is a sort of good-fellowship pledge and 
charming in its simplicity. Now the lady of the 
house was observing the honored rights of the 
shlatko to this foreigner who late the evening be- 
fore had deposited a very muddy automobile in her 
courtyard. 

There was still a good half hour before INI. Todo- 
lich would be ready, so I determined to take the 
children riding, my ulterior motive being to win 
over Milka. They had never been in an automo- 
bile before. We rolled the car out of the court, 
and started the engine. No sooner had the auto- 
mobile appeared in the street than the neighbor- 
hood became alive with children, all running toward 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 35 

us, the traces of half-finished breakfasts showing 
on many of their faces. I piled them all in, on top 
of each other, in layers, and hung them about in the 
tonneau. Milka had deigned to come to the side- 
walk, where I pretended not to notice her, but took 
my seat at the wheel. If you had never, never had 
a ride in an automobile, and would like to very, very 
much, and if you were to see one just about to go 
away with everybody else in it and you left behind, 
what would you do? 

Milka did not set up a j^ell or smash anything. 
No, at five she knew a better way than that. 
Calmly, but very quickly, before the automobile 
could possibly get away, she stepped upon the run- 
ning-board, pushed two youngsters out of her way, 
bobbed up between me and the wheel, climbed upon 
my knee, and gave me, quite as if it had been for 
love alone, a resounding kiss on the cheek. I am 
sure she might have had a thousand Fords if she 
could have got in one such coup with the great De- 
troit manufacturer. So on that cloudless August 
morning we had a "joy ride" through the streets of 
Belgrade, and the noise we made could, I know, be 
heard in the enemy-lines. This was only a few 
short weeks before the sixth of October, 1915. 

Of course war is war, but let us get a picture. 



36 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

Suppose on a perfect day in Indian summer you 
sat in that tiny, flower-filled court with the hos- 
pitable mother; JNIitar, the handsome; Dushan, the 
cautious ; and JNIilka, the coquettish. As you romp 
with the children, you hear distantly a dull clap 
of thmider, just as if a summer shower were brew- 
ing. A second, a third clap, and you walk out to 
the entrance to scan the sky. It is deep blue and 
cloudless, but away over the northern part of the 
cit}', while you look, as if by magic, beautiful, shiny 
white cloudlets appear far up in the crystal sky, 
tiny, soft, fluffy things that look like a baby's pow- 
der-puff, and every time one appears a dull bit of 
thunder comes to you. For twelve months off and 
on you have seen this sight. You think of it as a 
periodic reminder that your nation and the one 
across the way are at war. You know that hereto- 
fore those powder-puffs have been directed at your 
own gims on the hills behind the city and at the in- 
trenchments down by the river. But there are 
many things you do not know. You do not know, 
for instance, that Mackensen is just across the river 
now with a great Teutonic army outnumbering 
your own forces flve or six to one. You do not 
know that for weeks the Austrian railways have 
been piling up mountains of potential powder-puffs 




A Sri hum i)ra>aiir> liuiiir 




..^. ii. 




A biklge built by ihelxomansial Duchil^oaiul »{i\[ in pciiccl ooiiditiun 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE .39 

behind Semlin, and bringing thousands of ponder- 
ous machines designed to throw said puffs not only 
at the forts and trenches, but at your flower-filled 
court and its counterparts throughout the city. 
You do not know that aeroplanes are parked by 
fifties beyond Semlin, and loaded to caj^acity with 
puffs that drop a long, long way and blossom in 
fire and death wherever they strike. You do not 
know that from a busy group of men in Berhn an 
order has gone out to take your city and your na- 
tion at any cost, and if you knew these things, it 
w^ould now be too late. For as you look, in a few 
brief moments, the thunder-storm rolls up and 
covers the city, such a thunder-storm as nature, 
with all her vaunted strength, has never dared to 
manufacture. ]Mitar and Dushan and Milka stop 
their play. Worried, the woman comes out and 
stands with you. You say the firing is uncom- 
monly heavy to-day, but it will mean nothing, and 
as you say this, you notice the powder-puffs on the 
slopes of the hills far short of the forts and over 
the town itself. High above you two of them sud- 
denly appear, and the storm begins in your region, 
in the street in front of you, on the homes of your 
neighbors. With increasing rapidity the rain falls 
now, five to the minute, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty- 



40 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

five, every sixty seconds, and every drop is from 
fifty pounds to a quarter of a ton of whirling steel, 
and in the hollow heart of each are new and strange 
explosives that, when they strike, shake the win- 
dows out of your house. Looking toward Semlin, 
you see the aeroplanes rising in fleets. Some are 
already over the city, directing the fire of the guns 
across the river, and others are dropping explosive 
bombs, incendiary bombs, and darts. In a dozen 
places already the city is blazing terribly. A thin, 
shrill, distant sound comes to you and the waiting 
woman, ahnost inaudible at first, but quivering like 
a high violin note. It rises swiftly in a crescendo, 
and you hear it now tearing down the street on 
your left, a deafening roar that yet is sharp, snarl- 
ing, wailing. Tw^o hundred yards away a three- 
story residence is lifted into the air, where it trem- 
bles like jelly, and drops, a heap of debris, into the 
street. Your friend lives there. His wife, his 
children, are there, or were, until that huge shell 
came. Milka, Dushan, and Mitar have come in 
time to see their playmates' home blown to atoms. 
Without waiting for anything, }■ ou and the quiet, 
frightened woman seize the children and start out 
of the city. As you come to the road that winds 
tortuously to the hills behind the town, you see that 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 41 

it is black with thousands and thousands of men 
and women dragging along screaming ]Mitars and 
Dushans and oMilkas. Hovering above this road, 
which winds interminably on the exposed hillside 
before it reaches the sheltering crest, flit enemy 
aeroplanes, and on the dark stream below they are 
dropping bombs. 

There is no other road. You know you must 
pass along beneath those aeroplanes. You look 
at the woman and the children, and wonder who 
will pay the price. Oh, for a conveyance now! If 
only the American were here with his automobile, 
how greatty would he increase the children's 
chances! Carriages are passing, but you have no 
carriage. Railway-trains are still trying to leave 
the city, but there is Hterally no room to hang on 
the trains, and the line is exposed to heavy fire. 
Only slowly can you go with the children down the 
street already clogged with debris. Now in front 
you see a friend with his family, the mother and 
four children. They are in a coupe, di'awn by good 
horses. How fortunate! The children recognize 
one another. Milka shouts a greeting. She is 
frightened, but of course does not realize the dan- 
ger. Even as she is answered by her playmate in 
the carriage, all of you are stunned by a terrible 



42 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

concussion, and there is no family or carriage or 
horses any more. There is scarcely any trace of 
them. The fierce hunger of a ten-inch shell sent 
to wreck great forts is scarcely appeased by one 
little family, and, to end its fury, blows a crater 
many feet across in the street beyond. Along with 
you Mitar has realized what is going on, and not the 
least of the trouble that overwhelms you is to see 
the knowledge of years di-op in a minute on his 
childish face when those comrades are murdered 
before his eyes. If he gets out of this inferno and 
lives a hundred years, he will never shake off that 
moment. The shell has blown a crater in his soul, 
and because he is a Serb, that crater will smoke 
and smolder and blaze until the Southern Slav is 
free from all which unloosed that shell or until he 
himself is blown beyond the sway even of Teutonic 
arms. He gi'asps his mother's hand and drags 
her on. 

Now you are in the outskirts of the city. No 
word can be spoken because of the constant roar 
of your own and the enemy's guns — a roar unfal- 
tering and massive, such as in forty-eight hours 
sixty thousand huge projectiles alone could spread 
over the little city. On the road you pass fre- 
quently those irregular splotches of murder char- 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 43 

acteristic of bomb-dropping. Here only one man 
was blown to pieces by a precious bomb, yonder two 
women and a child, farther along eight people, men, 
women, and children, lie heaped. Here again only 
a child was crippled, both feet or a hand gone. It 
is hard to be accurate when sailing high in the air, 
hard even for those fearless men who with shrapnel 
bursting around their frail machines calmly drop 
death upon women and children. I think they are 
the bravest, perhaps, of all the fighting men, these 
bomb-droppers in whatever unifoim. For, it is 
not easy to face death at any time, but to face it 
while in the act of dropping murder on the bowed 
heads of women, on the defenseless heads of sleep- 
ing, playing, or fleeing children, surely it requires 
nerve to face death thus engaged. 

Two loyal subjects of the Kaiser were dexter- 
ously dropping bombs on Kragujevats one morn- 
ing. They pitched some at the arsenal, which they 
missed, and some at the English women's hospital 
camp, which they hit, one bomb completely destroy- 
ing all the unit's store of jam. A nurse was a few 
feet away, unaware that anything was threatening 
until orange marmalade showered her. Then she 
and all her colleagues went out into the open to 
watch the brave Germans. They were sailing 



44 WITH SKKIUA IXPO KXILK 

nboiit nicely onoiiiili uulil a stray \)'wcc o\' slnnpnol 
hit Ihoir L^jis-lank. Thou the oai»lc bocaiuo a 
mcttor, which by the tiiuo it h^litetl in the miihllc of 
I the t'juiip \vas hiiniod out. The two ohc(Hcnt sub- 
jects ol' tlic (JiMMian emperor were incoherent bits 
of blai'k toast, and the Nvonicn (.'aujc and picket! 
scnncnirs oil" llie aeroplane. 'IMicy showed thciu 
to nie. 

So ycni passed with the mother and children by 
these [)atches of horror that mark the trail of the 
newest warfare. 

Or perhaps you linLi'crcd in the city imtil the 
secontl cvenini;', Mhen no one any loni;er dared to 
linger even in the scattered sheltered spots. Per- 
hai)s with the mother, Milar, Dushan, and IMilka, 
viui came out at dusk ol' the second day, when the 
remnant oi' the population Avas leaving, when the 
cMicmy had elVected their crossing, and hand-to- 
hand combat raged ilown by the river, when the 
guns were being dragged away to new positions, 
and the troops were falling hurriedly back. It" 
you ilid, you left in a linal spiu't of the bcnnbard- 
ment, and on the crest of the hills behind 15elgrade 
ycni stopped to look back for the last time on that 
city. For the city that in future years you may 
C(une back to w ill have nothing in common w ith the 



BATTLE LINES AT I*EACE 45 

one you arc leaving cxccpl location. Major El- 
liot, of the IJritish marines, sto[)jjc(l at this time to 
look back. A few days later he toUl me what he 
saw. There was a dump-heap, an ash-pilc, several 
miles in extent, lyin^ along the Save and the l)an- 
ul)e. In hundreds of spots great beds of live coals 
glowed, in hundreds of others roaring flames leaped 
high into the sky, and over the remaining dark 
spaces of the heap, where as yet no conflagration 
raged, aeroplanes, sailing about, were dropping 
bombs that fell and burst in wide sprays of liquid 
fire, sprinkling tlie city with teiTible beauty. 
Thirty or forty to the minute huge shells were 
bursting in the town. 

You may get away with the family, or you may 
not. You and the mother may be killed, and M itar 
left to lead the younger ones. All three may be 
blown to pieces, and only you two left with the 
memory of it. More than seven thousand just like 
you and yours, hundreds of Mitars with firight 
dreams and curling hairs, hundreds of litlle, 
freckled, pug-nosed Dushans, hundreds of dainty, 
laughing Milkas, reddened the rough paving-stones 
of Belgrade or smoldered beneath the glowing ruins 
of homes such as M. Todolich had proudly shown 
me. 



46 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

We have supposed our picture, and every inijior- 
tant detail of it is supposed from things that many 
eye-witnesses told me, among them Serbian officers 
of high rank, and ^Vdiniral Troubridge, ISIajor El- 
liott, Colonel Phillips, and the British marines who 
helped in the defense. If still the details are 
wrong, there is one little fact that cannot escape 
attention : somethino; has become of seven thousand 
civilians who on the sixth of October were in Bel- 
gTade. When I asked Admiral Troubridge if the 
estimate that this many had been killed was too 
high, he replied that it was certainly too low. 

Innumerable such pictures as ours, I feel sure, 
God on high might have seen in Belgrade during 
those forty-eight hours. But perhaps God on high 
was not looking. It seems more than likely that 
He was too busy. Belgrade is tiny. In smiling 
lands to the west He had five hundred miles of thun- 
der-storms to watch, many beautiful to^nis more im- 
portant than Belgrade, where lived and died ISIitars 
and Dushans and ^lilkas in numbers just as great. 
Ajid on the other side of two old and charming 
countries. He had a thousand miles more of thun- 
der to superintend, and farther to the east, where 
another nation flaunts a rival to His avowed only 
Son, He had certain other matters to oversee, a mil- 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 47 

lion people massacred beside the soldiers on the bat- 
tle-line. Also over His wide, gray oceans there 
were great ships with Milkas and Dushans and 
Mitars on them, and their fathers and mothers. 
He must witness the destruction of these, for surely, 
like the rest of us, God loves the brave sailors. So 
a little forty-eight hour thunder-storm on the banks 
of the "beautiful blue Danube" could not have 
claimed very much of His attention. As the ed- 
itors say. He must be "full up on war stuff," and, 
anyway, there are not enough of the Serbs to make 
them so terribly important; like us, for instance. 
Besides, people in the great world tell us war is 
war. 

After the fine morning ride with Mitar, Dushan, 
and Milka, we left Belgrade, retraced our steps over 
the peaceful road along the Danube, but at Semen- 
dria turned eastward and so, after nightfall, neared 
Velico-Gradishte, also on the Danube, and nestled 
in the very first foot-hills of the Carpathians. Just 
before sunset we had passed through Posharevats, 
headquarters for the third Serbian army. Shortly 
beyond to the northward lies the famous Stig coun- 
try, broad, level, and fertile as few lands are. We 
climbed a hill, from the top of which we overlooked 
the wide valley ahead. For many miles, until lost 



48 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

in the deep blue of the distant Carpathians, the hind 
was as smooth as a floor, and in the slanting rays of 
the sun a rich gold color was spread over all of it so 
unhrokenly and evenly that we could not imagine 
what it was. JMallory and I guessed and guessed, 
but could not make it out. Then we descended into 
it down a two-mile barren hill, and inmiediately the 
road became a narrow lane between solid walls of 
tasscling Indian corn, the wide-flung gold of which 
had puzzled us. In no part of j^Vmerica have I seen 
corn superior to that of these fields, cultivated 
though they were by the most primitive methods. 
One of the things that brought ^Ir. ISIallory there 
was to see to the transportation with his unit's auto- 
mobiles of some three hundred thousand kilograms 
of corn which the Government had bought for the 
destitute in ^lacedonia. The cars were to haul it 
to the railway station about twenty kilometers dis- 
tant. This corn was of the crop gathered two years 
previously. That of the preceding year was stored 
untouched in the peasants' barns, and now we saw 
this wonderful crop almost ready to gather. This 
shows how lack of transportation hampers every- 
thing in Serbia. People in southern Serbia were 
on the point of starvation, while here was food 



BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 49 

enough for the whole nation. The Teutonic aUies 
have taken a rich country. 

For two hours we ran at top-speed across this 
level farm, and then, crossing a thin strip of woods, 
came to a long tree-lined avenue, verj^ similar to a 
route nationale in France. We were bounding 
along this, our head-lights making plain the road, 
when a mounted gendarme rode into the way ahead 
and held up his hand. He made us put out all 
lights and sneak along very slowly, for we were now 
under the enemy's guns again, and at this point 
they were more disposed to pop at anything they 
saw, particularly automobile-lights. So we crept 
into the little place, which was knocked to pieces al- 
most as much as Vishegrad, had our supper, and 
went to bed in houses where every crevice was care- 
fully covered to conceal the light. 

It was considered an act of foolhardiness and 
daring to cross the public square of Velico-Gra- 
dishte in daylight. The main street of the place 
could be swept by gun-fire across the river at any 
time. So the few remaining citizens, and there 
were more than one would think, took devious ways 
down side streets to get from one place to another. 
We stopped most of the next day, a very hot, still 



:>() W I III SKinUA INTO KXILK 

(Iny, ill uliiili it scciiK'd very iiicon^iiioiis lliul wo 
IijkI I() siicjik nlxuil like lliicvis, .iiul in [\\v nl'lrnioon 
It 11, ninkiii«jf ii wide dcloiir lliroii^li the Slig" coiiii- 
Iry ruillicr lo ins|)('('l llic li;ii\(sl. 

Aii()lli("r lii|> wliirli I iii.idi' Iroiii Nisli lo Znjccliiir 
alonk"' llic valU'v <»!" Ilu' Tiniok rmllu r irvc-ilcd lo 
inc llic v.'isl, polciili.ii resources of Serbia. \\^' saw 
lillle of armies on lliis lri|), Ix^eausi' we were aioni;' 
I Ik* Hnlnaiian fronliir, and il was llieii loo early 
lor Serbia, lo liaAC lieavy forces massed llierc. 
l<'.\(M-ywliere the peasants |)oinled to llie eastward 
and lold lis: "'riieri> lies (lie Hiiln'arian frontier. 
Tliere it is, just on lop llial mountain. I'rom 
liert* it is only lialf an hour's walk." 'I'liey sj)oke n\' 
il as if il were a tiling- alive, wliicli was beini;- lield 
back l)y I hem by main slrcni^th and awkwardness, 
and tbey si)oke of it with awe. How well, in that 
peaceful summer, tlu\v reali/ed what a move on the 
liult^arian frontier would mean to IIumii. 

During- this year of peace in war there was no 
anxiety on the part of the Serbs as to their Aus- 
trian frontiers. 1 spoke to scores of ollieers and 
soldiers, and not once was anylhint»' but conHdeneo 
expressed. Hut their IVonlier lo the east llu\v al- 
most without e\ci>ption distrusted. 1 do not think 
that there was one Serbian in Serbia who did not 



liATTLK LINKS AT PKA( K 51 

firinly believe tlial liul^aria would Jillaek when 
fully j)rei)are(J. 1 1 was a fhiri^- llial, called for no 
more discMissiori, a lliirj^j;- so patent, to all ol)S(;rvers 
of afl'airs in llie Halkans Ilia! only allied dij)lornaey 
was loo sLijj)id io see. I know now lli;il, while I 
was tulkin/4' to tlie captain about it, tlieif- in l>f)srH'a, 
the English papers were full of an (rnt(tite cordiale 
with Hul^aria, hut also as we talkecJ Ifiat afternoon 
an orderly rodr; u[), [landing- his superior a note. 
The captain ^lane('d at it and turned to me. "At 
la.st," he said irj rVench. "Tfie hlut; order })as come. 
Wc must he ready to ^o in half an hour." 

And this for me was the hell that rang up the 
curtain on what is without douf)t one of the greatest 
tragedies our e(;nlijry will see. It carri(; on n n;ition 
almost as much at peace as Helgium was, a country 
much larger than Hc-lgium, with no good roads, 
with no France, no I^ingliind to offer refuge, noth- 
ing hut wild mountairjs devoid of food. It came 
not in the days of summer, when si, Mer is a hahit 
and not a necessity, hut at the fjeginm'ng oi' the sav- 
age Halkan winter, when a roof very frerpjently 
means life, and it lasted not tliree or four weeks, hut 
ten. 



CHArXER II 

THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 

WHEN the long expected "blue order" 
came, it meant that Serbia was stripping 
her war frontiers of all reserves and most of her 
lirst-line troops. It meant that on the Drina only 
a skeleton army was left, while along the long 
frontiers of the Save and the Danube perhaps a 
hundred thousand men were spread, and all the 
others — Serbia's whole army numbered about three 
hundred and fifty thousand — were to be massed 
along the Bulgarian border to guard tlie nation's 
one hope — the single line of the Orient Railway 
from Saloniki to Belgrade. At about this time the 
English Parliament was being regaled with "the 
cordial feeling that always existed between Eng- 
land and Bp\,.a-ia." 

The next morning I watched the garrison at 
Vardishte file over the Shargon Pass to Kremna, 
the chief post of the Drina division, while the 
fourth-line men, the cheechas, were sent down to 
Vishegrad to take the first-line places. 

Of all the fresh, unhackneyed thmgs that Serbia 

52 



THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 53 

offered abundantly to the Western visitor, perlia])s 
none is more indicative of the nation's real spirit, 
certainly none is more picturesque and appealing, 
than these cheechas of the army. Cheecha means 
"uncle," and in Serbia, where men age more swiftly 
than anywhere else on earth, it is popularly applied 
to men more than thirty. But the cheechas of the 
fourth line range from forty five to an indefinite 
limit. The Serb seems never too old to fight. 

They had no uniforms, these patriarchs of the 
army, and, marching by, presented a beggar's array 
of tattered homespuns at once ludicrous and touch- 
ing. To see their grandfathers in dirty rags, un- 
washed, half starved, blue with cold, drenched with 
rain, many of them suffering with rheumatism, 
scurvy, neuralgia, and in the last days of their na- 
tion's life dying by hundreds of wounds, cold, and 
starvation, was one of the things the Serbs had to 
bear. 

It was the cheechas who first welcomed me to 
Serbia. I shall never forget my feelings when at 
Ghevgheli, the border town between Greece and 
Serbia, I looked out of the train window at my first 
cheecha. I wondered if this was the typical Ser- 
bian soldier, for he looked not a day under seventy, 
despite the broad grin on his face when he saw the 



54 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

party of American workers. It was midsummer 
and as hot as southern Italy, but the old fellow was 
dressed about as heavily as we would be for a bliz- 
zard. On his shoulders he had a thick woolen cape 
of brown homespun, attached to which was a peeked 
hood designed to slip over the head in wet weather, 
and which, when in place, added a monk-like 
touch to the rest of his outlandish costume. Un- 
derneath the cape he wore a sleeveless jacket of 
sheepskin, with the thick wool turned inside, and 
this in July. Beneath the jacket was a shirt of 
linen, home manufactured, and he wore long 
trousers that fitted skin tight about his calves and 
thighs but bagged like bloomers in the back. He 
had on thick woolen stockings, which he wore pulled 
over the trousers up to his knees, like golf hose, and 
which were resplendent with wide borders of bril- 
liant colors. On his feet were the half-shoe, half- 
sandal arrangements known as opanhi. His queer 
get-up made one forget how old and forlorn he 
must be, for despite his cheerful face, he could not 
have been but wretched with nothing in life before 
him except to guard that scorching railway track 
while his sons and grandsons died on the frontiers. 
As I saw him standing there in the dust and heat, 
some dialect lines of Lanier's came to me: 



THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 57 

What use am dis ole cotton stalk when life done picked 
my cotton? 

But that was because I was ignorant of Serbia. 
Not by a long way had "Life done picked" those 
cheechas' "cotton." Nearly a million Germans, 
Austrians, and Bulgarians did it a few months 
later, but the harvest, thank God! was not all one- 
sided. 

As the slow-moving train crept north into Ser- 
bia, our acquaintance with the cheechas grew. At 
every little bridge there were four of them, two at 
each end, living in tiny tepee-like shelters built of 
brush. At the stations companies of them were 
drawn up along the track, grotesque groups, non- 
descript and filthy, with rifles of many makes slung 
over their stooping shoulders. They never failed 
to salute us and cheer us, their enthusiasm being 
mingled with a charming naive gratitude when we 
scattered American cigarettes among them. 

While we were camping just outside Nish dur- 
ing the last weeks of July there were three ancient 
cheechas who passed our camp every afternoon at 
sunset on their way to sentry duty, and every morn- 
ing just after sunrise they returned. We could 
never say anything to one another except "Dobra- 
vechie" ("Good evening") and "Dobra-utro" 



:,S Wnil SKHHIA IXTO EXILE 

('■(idocl imH-iiinn") . but a frit'iiilsliip sprang up bo- 
tuoon us, ncNcrtheless. JNlonth after uioulli Ibis 
was tbcir cK'i'U[)atii)n, ost'iUatiou between tbeir iiltby, 
vermin-intVsted abodes in Nisli and fbat ilesobde 
hilltop Avliere tbev watelied throuob the starlit or 
stormy nii>bts. They liad beaten out a narrow, 
dusty path throui;]i the upla:ul pastures, nionoto- 
lunisly treadini»' whieh, numehin.:," luiidvs of blaek 
bread and lar^e green pep])ers, the/ symbolized 
the eheeehas' existence. 

Their childlike natures might lead one to suppose 
that as guards they would not be worth nuich, but 
this wouUl be wrong, ^lost guard duty is simple. 
Vou stand up and watch a place, and when some 
one comes vou challenge him. If his answer is 
satisfactory, good; if not, you cover liim with your 
rifle and then march him in to your superior. If he 
(.lisobeys, you shoot. Nothing is said about exemp- 
tion. A sentry is no respecter of persons, and the 
simpler minded he is, the less of a respecter is he 
inclined to be. 

One evening a man of our camp wandered to the 
precincts sacred to our three eheeehas. lie heard 
a loud "Stoy!" to which, instead of halting, he re- 
sponded, "Americanske" and kept going. An- 
other "Stoy!" brought the same result, and so a 



TUK C IfKKC HAS OF SKIMUA 50 

tfiirrJ. 'J'hcn out of Ihf- fJirrinf:s.s Uxnntd a hoofJf;fi 
figure, and with an obsolete rifle blazed away, above 
the trespasser's head, of course, but not ;^reatly 
above it, a sr>rt of "VVilliarrj "I'ell" calculation. 
Swifter than ifie rrK:f)Uf;k came our wanderer fiorric-, 
dowTi tfie dusty trail, hatless and breathless, wise in 
the ways of eheeehas. 

Xear Jiel/^rade one nir»ht a J^cntjf.rnan of* some 
military consequence decided to inspect certain 
trenches. Depending upon his uriifV>rm and well- 
known name, he did not bother to get the password. 

"And do you know," he told me, "two bally old 
chaps from Macedonia who spoke no known lan- 
guage marched me a mile and a half to their cap- 
tain, and it was all he could do to convince the stern 
beggars that 1 fiad a rigljt to my urjiform and was 
really the iiritish military attache." 

When fighting was going fjn with the ]>ulgariarLS, 
not very far from Xish last autumn, one o? the 
American Sanitary Commission, a hopelessly col- 
lege-bred person, with strong laboratory instincts, 
wandered alone and unaided about the environs 
of the city, dreaming of hypothetical water- 
supplies; and dreaming thus, he wandered into 
realms he wot not of, and, wfiat mattered more, into 
the snug nest of two valiant eheeehas set to guard 



60 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

a road. Two days later inquiring government offi- 
cials, set in motion by still more inquisitive friends, 
found him living the life and eating the food of the 
cheechas. They had orders not to leave that post, 
and they were determined that he should not until 
an officer had seen him. 

Despite this inconvenient, unflinching devotion 
to the letter of the law, I found a softer side to the 
cheechas. One afternoon at Nish I climbed a 
steep and dusty trail up one of the neighboring hills 
which overlooks for thirty miles or more the broad 
sweep of the Morava. Accompanying me was a 
delightful, but really distressingly proper, English 
lady whom I had recently met. A rich Balkan 
sunset across the valley was well worth the climb, we 
thought, but to the gay old cheecha we found at the 
top it seemed incredible that any one not touched 
with divine madness would make that exertion just 
to see the sun go down. With ingenuous and em- 
barrassing signs he made it known that duty held 
him there, but that we need not mind; and there- 
upon, with a wink as inconspicuous as the full moon, 
he turned his back upon us and so remained. We 
stood that back as long as it was humanly possible to 
stand it, and then rose to go ; but he motioned us to 
stop, and running to a clump of bushes, he pulled 



THE CHEFXIIAS OF SERBIA 61 

out a luscious melon, — all his supper, I am sure, — 
and with as obvious a "Bless you, my children !" as I 
ever saw, presented it to us. 

They are made of a fine timber these cheechas. 
With amazing endurance and wearing qualities, 
nothing seems to shake them. On one of my trips 
with ]M. Todolich we stopped for coffee in a little 
village near Zajechar. Of course the only men in 
the cafe were very old, too worn out even for Ser- 
bian military service. Several of these gathered 
about our table to hear what news M. Todolich 
could give, and one among them I specially noticed. 
I am sure that Job in the last stages of his affliction 
approached this old fellow in appearance. lie had 
had six sons, all of whom had been killed. His wife 
had died shortly before, and just the previous week 
a great flood on the river had completely destroyed 
his home and livelihood, and had drowned his one 
daughter-in-law with her two little sons. What 
would you say to a man of seventy five who has 
watched his life go by like that? M. Todohch tried 
to say something, and I heard the cheecha reply 
in a few Serbian words the meaning of which I 
did not understand, nor how he could reply at 
all in that level, uncomplaining, perfectly calm 
tone. 



62 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

"What did he say?" I asked the interpreter. 

"He says, 'God's will be done.' " And that was 
all we heard him say. 

At Dobrun four old cronies were detailed to be 
"hewers of wood and drawers of water" to our 
camp, and tirelessly they hewed and drew. When, 
one considers the deep-rooted, constitutional aver- 
sion to work which is without doubt the Serbs' worst 
drawback, this industry on their part appears at its 
true value. A woman journalist, measuring with 
her profound gaze the length and breadth and depth 
of Serbia, and the hearts of its people, in a junket 
of a couple of weeks or so, has insinuated the un- 
gratefulness and cupidity of the Serbs. Nothing 
could be further from the truth. For the smallest 
acts their gratitude overflows all bounds, and as for 
pride, no peasants of Eurojie can approach these 
lowly people in their dislike of dependence. An 
appealing desire to show us at least their sense of 
thankfulness actuated even these old codgers to do 
things which by nature they despised to do. 

At first our Bosnian menage rotated about a 
refugee cook from Vishegrad, who, had she not been 
Serb, would certainly have been Irish. She was a 
leisurely soul who refused to let any exigency what- 
ever make her hasten. On the first pay-day we 



THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 63 

missed her, and, searching the camp, finally fomid 
her in the cellar. Alas ! she was a disciple of Omar, 
and not to be awakened. So with the perfect cour- 
tesy that we never failed to encounter from Serbian 
officers, the major at Vardishte sent us his own 
cook, a cheecha, and by far the sleekest, best-fed, 
most fortunate-looking cheecha I ever saw. 

There was something undeniably Falstaffian in 
his nature, and he affected a certain elaborate mock 
dignity which made me give him at once the respect- 
ful title of "Guspodin." "Guspodin Cook" we 
called him, to his delight. He was soon referring 
to himself as "Guspodin Couk." While unpack- 
ing a box of old clothing sent out by well-meaning 
people from England or America, we came across, 
amid ball-dresses and stiff-bosomed shirts, a bat- 
tered top-hat. It was a perfect example of the hat 
always seen askew on the swinging heads of stage 
inebriates, but it took Guspodin Cook's eye. 
Thereafter he was never seen without it, whether 
peeling potatoes, carrying away garbage, or spin- 
ning a yarn. 

Only one thing on earth did he prefer to cooking, 
and that was telling stories. Sitting about the 
great fire which we always made of pine-logs after 
supper, our American-Serb soldiers would get Gus- 



r>t WITH SKKIUA INTO EXILE 

ptnlin Cook wound up and translate for us. I 
could never rid iiiyselt' of a sneaking suspicion 
tliat our honorable chef had never seen a battle- 
line ; he was too good a cook. 15ut I had no proof 
oi' this from his speeches. His clicf-d'a'uvrc, the 
pii'cc (Ic rrsistance, of his narrative larder, which he 
always got off while sitting tailor fashion, his "Al 
Jolson" hat cocked over one eye, went something 
like this : 

One day last winter, after we had run the Suabas out 
of Serbia and I was stationed up here, I asked my cap- 
tain to let nic make a visit to my family at Valjevo. 
lie told me I could, so I started out to walk home. I 
got to Oucliitze in two days all right, and after resting 
there a little while started out on the way to Valjevo. 
The road runs over the tops of the mountains, a wild 
countrv, and hardly anybody lives there. Once in a 
while I found traces of the fighting that had been done 
the month before, but now the whole country was quiet, 
ami I met no one at all, not even any Serbian soldiers. 
About the middle of the afternoon I heard a cannon go 
off four or five kilometers away, and I heard something 
terrible tear through the trees not far to my left. I 
could n't imagine what a cannon was doing there, with 
no army within fifty kilometers and no fighting going on 
at all. While I was wondering, a big shell tore up the 
road a few hundred meters ahead of me. Then I knew 
the Suabas had slipped back into Serbia, and I began 
to run. I heard a lot more shots, and I kept on going. 




VVOuiidcd (Jh(;ccli;is hciiiK triiii.sport(;(i to a hohpital 




A Chcecha flashing army (ii.spatchcH by means of a heiiograpli 



THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 67 

In an hour I came to a village where there were some 
gendarmes. I told them the Suabas were coming right 
behind me, but they said that I was a liar. Then I said 
for them to go back up the road on their horses and see. 
But they made me go back with them. 

We went to where the shot had hit the road, and while 
we were standing around looking at it, we heard the 
cannon again ; but the shell did n't come our way this 
time. We turned into a wood road that led in the direc- 
tion from which the sound came. Soon we were nearly 
knocked off our horses by another shot, which went off 
right at us behind a lot of thick bushes on our left. We 
stopped short to listen, but could n't hear anything. 
The gendarmes were scared to death now, but I was all 
right. I said, "Come on ; let 's go there and see who is 
shooting up the countr3%" They said it was mighty 
strange. Suabas would n't be acting like that, and one 
of 'em, Mitrag, said a battle had been fought about where 
we were and a lot of good men killed and he did n't know 
— ma3'be some of 'em had come back to life. 

But I led up to the bushes, and we crawled to where 
we could see a clear space behind. There was a Suaba 
field-gun all right, with a lot of ammuniton piled up. A 
good many empty shells were lying about, too ; but there 
was n't anybody — no Guspodin, I swear it ; not a sign 
of any Suaba or anybody around that place. The gen- 
darmes lay there on their bellies, but I jumped up and ran 
to the gun crying, "Long live Serbia." I put my hand 
on the gun, but jerked it away mighty quick. It was 
hot enough to boil soup on, almost. I picked up some of 
the shells, and they were hot, too. Guspodin, I began 
to shiver and jump about like a restless horse. Here was 



68 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

a hot gun and hot shells, and no enemy in the country at 
all, and nobody around the gun ; and, anyway, the shots 
had been scattered all over the country without any aim. 
It seemed almost as if something or other had come back 
to life and was shooting that gun just because it was in 
the habit of doing it. I was about ready to go back to 
those gendarmes when they began to yell, and started 
out through the brush like rabbits. "There they are { 
Get 'em ! Get 'cm !" they said, and would n't stop a min- 
ute to answer me. Then I decided the best thing for me 
was to get back to the horses, which I did. 

In a few minutes the gendarmes came up, leading four 
boys about fifteen years old. They were clawing and 
biting and putting up a good fight. At last the gen- 
darmes got them quiet and made 'em tell their story. 
They said they had found the gun and ammunition there 
not long after the Suabas went away. They supposed 
they had gone in such a hurr3^ that there was n't time to 
break up the gun, and our soldiers had n't found it. 
They said they had been trying to make it go off for two 
weeks, but had just found out how that day. They 
did n't mean any harm ; it was fun, and away out in the 
woods where they would n't hurt an^'body, they said. 
That was enough; each one of us cut a long stick and 
took a boy for half a hour. Then we went off and re- 
ported the gun to the army. 

With this final statement Guspodin Cook would 
always take off the top-hat, wipe the noble brow 
beneath, and place it tenderly on again slanted at 
the opposite angle. 



THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 69 

He had a curious theor}'^ that by some strange 
sense children always detected when war would 
come. He could give numerous examples to prove 
his statement. One was that whenever the chil- 
dren all over the country were seized with a desire 
to play at war, real war was sure to come soon. He 
said that in July of 1914 all over Serbia he had 
never before seen the children playing soldier so 
much; and, lowering his voice, he told us that now 
he saw them at it again everywhere, so that "Some- 
thing was coming soon." Heaven knows this 
prophecy at least was true. 

Such were the cheechas whom, on that fine au- 
tumn morning, I watched go down to Vishegrad. 
Our four orderlies were with them, and also Gus- 
podin Cook. His time had come at last. Serbia 
was now facing a period when no man able to stand 
alone could be spared from the battle-line. Chee- 
cha always has been a term of deep respect and love 
among the Serbs, and rightly so ; but after this war 
they will hold a ten times stronger lien on the affec- 
tions of their country. Young troops, fresh and 
perfectly munitioned, were awaiting them in the 
enemy trenches on the Drina — troops that these old 
grandfathers could not hope to stop. 

They knew what they were going into ; they had 



70 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

no illusions. Distributing among them thousands 
of cigarettes of which I had become possessed, I 
gathered from their words of thanks how much 
hope they had of ever coming back. "These wiFl 
be all I '11 ever want," one gray-bearded scarecrow 
remarked to our interpreter when I gave him a hun- 
dred. He and the otliers seemed neither sorry nor 
glad. Somebody had to go. They were chosen, 
and there was an end to it. They were as com- 
pletely wiped out as troops can be, dying almost to 
a man. And during the nightmare of the next ten 
weeks, wherever the fourth line had to bear the 
brunt, they distinguished themselves. INIany epi- 
sodes could be told, but the defense of Chachak is 
perhaps one of the most remarkable. 

Chachak is on the narrow-gage Ouchitze 
branch of the Orient Railway. Not far to the 
south is Kraljevo. When the first great onslaught 
of the Bulgarians carried them by sheer weight of 
numbers to the environs of Nish, the capital was 
moved to Chachak, supposedly a temporarily safe 
retreat. But the Germans, as usual, did not fight 
according to their enemies' surmise. Risking most 
difficult roads, they suddenly threatened the new 
capital from the northwest, forcing the Govern- 
ment southward, first to Kraljevo, then to Rashka, 



THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 71 

Mitrovitze, Prizrend, and Scutari. The cheechas 
defended Chachak. Three times the Germans 
wrested the town from them, and each time the 
cheechas retook it. Only when four fifths of them 
had been put out of action did the Germans finally 
succeed in holding the place. 

With rifles of every possible description, too 
old for real soldiers, rejected by the first three 
lines of defense, the cheechas of Chachak faced as 
fine troops as Germany could muster, perfectly 
equipped, splendidly provisioned, and feeling with 
increasing assurance a whole nation crumbling be- 
fore them. For the cheecha knows not only how 
to thrive on half a pound of dry bread a day, and 
nothing else; he knows how to lie against a tree or 
turn himself into a stone, and with Serbia in her 
death-grip, he only wished to die. 

I believe the cheechas felt the loss of their coun- 
try more keenly than any one else. Most of them 
had lived through nearly all of her free history^ 
Unlike the educated Serb, they could not see a 
bright political lining behind the present pall of 
blackness. But I have yet to hear a complaint 
from one of them. There was Dan, one of the or- 
derlies who retreated with the English nurses. He 
had been to America, and he had numerous fail- 



72 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

ings, hut no one could sec him at that time without 
forgetting everything except his grief. The suf- 
fering he underwent, the cold and hunger, seemed 
to matter nothing to hhn; but by the hour at night 
he would squat by his smoldering fire and mumble: 

"AVhata I care 'bout myself? Whata 1 'mount 
to? T'ree million people lost! Nuthin' else don't 
matter. T'ree million people — free million — 
lost!" 

All Serbs love to sing, and most of their songs 
have a mournful tinge. The more uncomfortable 
the Serb becomes, the louder and longer he sings. 
AVhcn, seven weeks after Chachak, I passed a com- 
pany of the fourth line on top of the Montenegrin 
mountains, during daj^s when there w^as absolutely 
no food for them, when they saw their comrades 
drop by the hundred, dead of starvation, cold, and 
exhaustion, when not one foot of Serbian soil was 
free, separated from their families in all probability 
forever, at the best for years, miserable, it seemed 
to me, beyond all human endurance, the cheechas 
w^ere singing. I cannot forget that song. The 
fine sleet cut their faces, and formed grotesque 
icicles on their woolly beards. The mountain 
wind blew their voices to shreds — voices mechan- 
ical, di'cary, hopeless, unlike anj'^ Serbians I had 



THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 73 

ever heard before. Not until I was right among 
them did I recognize the song, a popular one that 
had sprung up since the war, its content being that 
"the Suabas are building houses the Serbians shall 
live in; the Suabas are planting corn the Serbians 
shall eat ; the Suabas are pressing wine the Serbians 
shall drink." 

The irony was sharp, but when one has hved 
in hell for ten weeks and is freezing to death on a 
mountain-top, one hears no trivial sarcasms, but 
only the great irony of life. Or so the cheechas 
seemed to feel. 



T 



ciiArrKU 111 

V. \ A C r A I' U ) N SCENES 

W'O weeks after 1 saw tlie eheeehas i>() down 
to \'ishei>'racl 1 iiu)ti)reil to \'aljevo, where 
were the headcjuarters of the first Serbian army. 
This Avas the sixth of Oetober, the day on whieh the 
Aiistrians and (Germans crossed the Drina, the 
Save, antl tlie Dannhe, and the l)onihardnu'nt oi' 
Belgraile was bei^iin in earnest. Two days later, 
throno-li confidential sources, I got news oi' the 
serious situation, hut it Avas not until refugees began 
to pour in from the Save that the general public of 
Valjevo knew anything of the fate of their capital. 
General ^lishieh was in conmiand of the first Ser- 
bian army at Valjevo, while farther to the east the 
second army was centered at ^lladenovats under 
General Stepanovich, and beyond the INIorava, 
General Sturm had the headtpiarters of the third 
army at Posharevats. General Zivkovich, known 
throughout Serbia as the "Iron General," was in 
separate command of the defense of Belgrade. 
Soon after the fall of the capital the three armies 

74 



EVACUATION SCENES 75 

began their retreat southward in parallel lines, the 
third army being driven more to the westward 
by the Bulgarians. Alter traversing about two 
thirds the length of Serbia, all three bent sharply 
westward toward the frontier between Prizrend and 
Jpek, and, after a eonferenee of the three eom- 
manders at the latter plaee, made their marvelous, 
but heartbreaking, retreat through the Albanian 
and Montenegrin mountains. This is a brief gen- 
eral summary of what the official communiques 
have to say. The hardship and suffering of both 
soldiers and eivilians during these simple manoeu- 
vers a thousand books could not adequately de- 
scribe. 

While the fall of Belgrade created a serious situ- 
ation at once, there was no immediate peril at Val- 
jevo. One day at this time, with the prefect of 
the district, I motored some fifty kilometers due 
north to Obrenovats. There had been an inces- 
sant rain for two weeks, and the road was almost 
impassable even for the automobile we were using. 
It was a terrible ride, and we arrived at the Colonel's 
headquarters, only a few kilometers behind the 
trenches, wet, cold, and very hungry, the last being 
our greatest concern, for it seemed the most deso- 
late spot imaginable, and we had brought no pro- 



76 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

visions with us. We could not continue to Obreno- 
vats because it was being violently shelled. Sit- 
ting on boxes around a rough pine table, we lunched 
with the Colonel on — delicious Russian caviar and 
French champagne I I do not know how he worked 
this miracle; I shall always wonder. 

Twenty-four hours later, however, the Aus- 
trians were where we had lunched, and, indeed, a 
great deal farther along, and we were evacuating 
Valjevo. Kragujevats was also preparing for 
evacuation, the arsenals being emptied and the 
munition factories smashed. 

Both these places were large hospital centers, 
and after the first few days of fighting both were 
crowded with wounded. Before I left Valjevo 
the hospitals had been emptied of all but the most 
desperate cases, and it required a very desperate 
condition indeed to force the Serbian patients to 
stay behind. The period of dreary, continuous 
rainfall continued, and it was into a sea of water 
and mud that the wounded had to flee. I stood on 
a street corner opposite one of the largest hospitals 
in Valjevo and watched the patients come out on 
their way to the railway station. I did not hear 
about this ; I saw it. Nearly all the hobbling, ban- 
daged, bloody, emaciated men were bareheaded. 



EVACUATION SCENES 77 

Before they got ten feet from the door they were 
soaked to the skin. The bandages became soggy 
sponges, and wounds began to bleed afresh. There 
were foreheads, cheeks, arms, legs, and feet in- 
cased in cloths dank with watery blood, and soon 
filthy with the street slush. The worst of it was 
that not only did virtually all lack overcoats, but 
many were barefooted and in cotton pajamas. 

They refused to stay and be captured. There 
were no more clothes for them, so they faced a jour- 
ney in the pouring rain, no one knew where nor how 
long. Some could not walk alone, and these the 
stronger aided. This determination never to be 
prisoners was general throughout the hospitals of 
Serbia. That is why in the next two weeks the 
railway stations, the rest-houses of the Red Cross, 
and even the railway-yards were dotted with rigid 
forms of men who had breathed their last in soaked, 
bloody clothing, lying on vile floors or in the mud. 
Why were they not forced to remain in the hospi- 
tals? I do not know. I doubt if any power on 
earth could have kept them there. There is a cer- 
tain sort of man who cannot be made to do a cer- 
tain sort of thing. The Serb never believes he is 
going to die until he is dead, and the wounded 
Serbs wanted to fight again. 



78 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

There were no vehicles to take them to the rail- 
way station, and when they arrived there it was not 
to get into comfortable hospital-trains, the few of 
these that Serbia had being utterly insufficient for 
the hordes of wounded. As long as the covered 
coaches lasted they poured into them, and then they 
boarded the open freight-trucks. I watched them 
get on like this at Valjevo, but it was not the last 
I saw of them and thousands like them. 

JNIany nurses and doctors told me about the 
scenes at Kragujevats. This place was the head- 
quarters for the huge Stobart mission as well as for 
other hospitals. It had comfortable accommoda- 
tions for not more than three thousand patients. 
During the week of the Belgrade bombardment 
more than ten thousand came there. ]Most of them 
were pretty well shot to pieces. The wards were 
filled, the floor spaces were filled, the corridors were 
filled, tents were filled, and finally wounded men lay 
thick in the j^ards, awaiting their turn at the hasty 
care the cruelly overworked doctors and nurses 
could give. For a week or ten days this kept up, 
then evacuation began. The scenes of Valjevo 
were reenacted, but on a greater scale. Again the 
open trucks that were meant for coal and lumber 
were piled with horribly suffering men. 



EVACUATION SCENES 79 

In telling of the harrowing finish of the work of 
these hospitals, which for the most part had been 
sent out from neutral or allied countries, it seems 
to me only just to pause a moment and give a little 
information, as accurately as I could gather it, 
about the work of Americans in Serbia, even though 
it does not tally with popular impressions in this 
country. I believe it is about as reliable as such 
information can be, and I unhesitatingly give my 
sources. 

If anything besides natural conditions stopped 
the typhus in Serbia, it is to Russian money and 
Russian workers that more credit should go than to 
any other agency. America did something, but 
not very much, toward stamping out typhus. 
What she did do has been blatantly advertised in 
this country. 

When in the last part of January, 1916, I re- 
turned to New York, a representative of one of our 
greatest American dailies came on board. The 
paper he represents has the reputation of employ- 
ing only expert reporters, and "ship-news" men 
are supposed to be specially keen. He came up to 
the group of first cabin passengers — only nine of 
us in all — evidently intent on getting a "story." 
He was on a good trail. Besides several Ameri- 



80 WITH SEKIUA INTO EXILE 

cans who had seen the war inside out on many 
fronts, there was among us the chief surgeon of the 
Imperial Russian hos]Mtals of Nish, Dr. S. Sar- 
gentich of Seattle. Dr. Sargentieh prohahly 
knows more ahout what has heen done for the relief 
of Serhiii than any other man in America. Also 
lie has many interesting personal experiences. 
Alone at Arangelovats for nearly a month, he 
faced a situatiini which was perhaps extreme even 
for that terrible epidemic, hut which illustrates 
pretty well the general condition throughout the 
country. In his hospital there were nine hundred 
typhus patients and several hundred more in the 
town. lie had started with fifty-seven unskilled 
soldiers as nurses and orderlies. All of them came 
down with typhus almost at once. lie had had six 
assistant doctors; all got typhus, and one died. 
Finally the cooks, treasurer, commissary -man, and 
pharmacist came doAMi. The doctor and four or- 
derlies reigned supreme over this pleasant com- 
pany. No aid could be sent to him. America had 
as yet scarcely realized that such a thuig as typhus 
existed in Serbia. 

Dr. Sargentieh speaks all the Balkan langiiages 
as well as French, German, and Russian. Born 
in Dalmatia, in his youth he passed many years 



EVACUATION SCENES 81 

among the vviJcJ rrifjuritairieers of JMontenegro and 
Alfjania, and lie has an insight into the Balkans 
that few can match. lie holds degrees from our 
hest universities, and several times has received high 
decorations, particularly fj-oni Russia and Mon- 
tenegro. The King of Italy and the King of Mon- 
tenegro have repeatedly expressed their admira- 
tion for him and his work. He was in Scrfjia 
eighteen months, and, what sets him off from nearly 
all of the workers we sent over, he drew no salary. 
Dr. Sargentich had a story, even though it would 
have required a little persuasion to get it out of him. 

The reporter faithfully took our names, heing 
very careful to spell them correctly, and on the ad- 
vice of one of the party turned to Dr. Sargentich. 

"Let 's see, er — er — you were in Serhia, Doctor? 
What did you find to do there?" 

"I was interested in the Russian hospitals." 

"Russian? Russian, did you say? How's 
that? Russians in Serhia — why, man, they're at 
war I" 

Ceasing his questioning after a moment, which 
was well, he pulled out a kodak and took pictures. 

Glancing over an index to American periodicals 
of the preceding year, I found such titles as these, 
"Sanitary Relief Work in Serhia," "American Re- 



82 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

lief in Serbia," "Serbia Saved by iVmericans." 
There are dozens of such articles advertising our 
work done there. Somewhere there may be a com- 
parison of our work with the work of other nations, 
but if so, I have failed to find it. The English and 
French certainly have done their part in the relief 
of Serbia, but the Russians, being first on the 
groimd and the only nation as far as I know to have 
any really important contingents at work during 
the height of the typhus epidemic, must sen'e as a 
comparison with us. 

In the estimates that follow I have in both in- 
stances included workers of all description except 
those employed directly by the Serbian Govern- 
ment on a business basis. Perhaps a score of 
American doctors went out under this arrangement. 
Dr. Sargenticli has furnished me with the Russian 
estimates, while the American figures are compiled 
from data found in the "Annual Report of the 
Bureau of Medical Service for 1915," Major 
Robert U. Patterson, Chief of Bureau, of the 
American Red Cross. 

According to Dr. Sargentich, the typlms epi- 
demic began in Serbia at Valjevo about December 
20, 1914. By INIarch 15, 1915, it was "thoroughly 
under control." So that about the time we were 



EVACUATION SCENES 83 

beginning to realize it, the epidemic was over. 
In September, 1914, Russia sent up from Sa- 
loniki two doctors, two sanitary inspectors, and five 
nurses. On October 15, 1914, three doctors and 
twelve nurses arrived in Belgrade from America. 
By November 1, 1914, Russia had four doctors, 
ten nurses, and two sanitary inspectors, while 
America had the original three doctors and twelve 
nurses. By January 15, 1915, when the epidemic 
was well under way, America had seven doctors and 
'twenty-four nurses, whereas Russia had sent in 
ten doctors, one hundred and ten nurses and order- 
lies, with equipment costing more than two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars. The Russians had 
also built numerous hospital barracks, while the 
Americans used buildings furnished by the Serbian 
Government. This was the ratio of the two na- 
tions during the worst of the typhus; our seven 
doctors to their ten, our twenty-four nurses to their 
hundred and ten. The value of our equipment I 
could not learn, but it did not approach their quar- 
ter of a million dollars. Both forces were so piti- 
fully insufficient to meet the need that it seems 
an impertinence even to enumerate them. Both 
groups lost some of their bravest, and both faced 
terrific risks, acting in the most heroic manner. 



84 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

The relief workers of all nations who came after 
March ran virtually no danger from the disease, 
and the lurid accounts given after this date are 
mainly imaginary. Most of the American workers 
came months after this date. The first contingent 
of the American Sanitary Commission sailed from 
New York April 3, 1915, and the second on May 
17. It was well into June before they could begin 
any sort of work. The Columbia University Re- 
lief Expedition sailed from New York on June 27, 
and was to return on September 15. A month was 
required to reach Nish and organize. The Froth- 
ingham unit is not included because of lack of data. 
It was not large. 

When typhus was fast waning, by March 25, 
1915, America still had only seven doctors and 
twenty-four nurses, although to the Russian force 
of ten doctors and one hundred and ten nurses had 
been added a very large unit, the exact number of 
which I could not learn. This new unit was to 
prepare for the expected return of ty23hus in the 
autumn, much the same object that the American 
Sanitary Commission had but three months earlier 
on the ground and with equipment twenty times 
as valuable. They spent two million dollars and 
built hospitals for four thousand patients, and this 



EVACUATION SCENES 85 

in addition to the quarter of a million dollars al- 
ready expended. I am unable to give figures for 
the American expenditure. At the very greatest 
estimate for all American activities in Serbia it is 
far less than a million dollars. The Sanitary Com- 
mission began with appropriations of forty thou- 
sand. How much they later expended I do not 
know. They employed young sanitary engineers 
at two hundred and fifty dollars a month and all 
expenses. The Columbia Expedition represented 
an outlay of about thirty thousand dollars, every 
one connected with it being absolutely without 
salary. 

The largest totals for the two nations at any time 
are: twenty-nine American doctors to forty-five 
Russian; seventy-four American nurses, sanitary 
inspectors, and chauffeurs to more than four hun- 
dred similar Russian workers. In addition, Russia 
built hospitals for four thousand patients and spent 
more than two and a half millions, while we spent 
less than a million and built no hospitals. 

Obviously Serbia was not saved by Americans. 
The much-talked-of Sanitary Commission had only 
to do with the fifteen southern districts. The 
French and English took care of this sort of work 
in the rest of the country. 



86 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

In Belgium, England has spent many times as 
much as America. Of course it was "her job" 
more than ours, but we hear so much of what we do ! 
The English expenditures in Serbia have also been 
enormous. A little thought and a few figures thus 
readily show that our well-known relief workers are 
also good advertisers. 

I do not wish to be misunderstood. I am not 
arguing that we ought or ought not to help Europe 
when there is so much needed at home. I am not 
arguing at all. I am merely trying to gage as 
accurately as possible what has actually been done, 
in order to furnish some sort of criterion by which 
to judge the oft-repeated sentiment that we are 
binding unfortunate nations to us by our stupen- 
dous generosity. The conviction that no nation at 
all has ever been or ever will be bound to another 
(at least to the extent of real aid in time of trouble) 
except by the natural ties of self-interest is a purely 
personal view. I give the facts as I found them. 

But whatever the origin of the hospitals, they 
were now throwing their gruesome burdens upon 
the railways, which, when the enemy approached, 
dumped them out on the muddy roads that led 
into the wilderness, where they died. Traveling 
southward down the main line at this time, amid 



EVACUATION SCENES 87 

the wildest confusion of thousands of families rush- 
ing away with only what could be carried on their 
backs, and of vast military stores being moved with 
no time for proper organization, of congested 
tracks and inexperienced trainmen, and the thou- 
sand and one incidents of a wholesale hegira, the 
thing which impressed me most, and which still 
lingers in my mind, is that flood of mangled, 
maimed humanity. 

The horror of it grew in extent and intensity as 
we passed from Valjevo to JNIladenovats, Yago- 
dina, Chupriya, and culminated at Krushevats in 
suffering soldiers multiplied ten thousand times. 
Krushevats was the sort of picture which, having 
once been seen, changes forever the aspect of life. 
If I were asked to give the death of Serbia in a few 
sentences, I should tell of a tearless woman beside 
the shreds of her little boy, struck down by an 
aeroplane bomb for "moral effect" ; of old men and 
young men, old women and young women, boys and 
girls, starving hopelessly in a frozen wilderness; 
of the Serbian army groping and staggering into 
Scutari ; and of the wounded at Krushevats. One 
does not get rid of such pictures. One goes on liv- 
ing with them long after the events themselves. 
They are seen in the bright shop windows and in 



SS Willi SKHIUA IN TO KXILK 

the tlioatcrs. All luiisii* spoaks of thoni: If shalK>w, 
it nuH'ks; if dvc\t onoiii>h, it culi\«iT/os i>r nu>urns, 
SUcj) only makes thorn \\\ovc vivid. Thcv arc 
spread iipmi all that one writes ov roads. So I was 
start lod whon I road in tho "Now York Trihuiio" 
an aooonnt by (ii>rdon Clcirdon-Sniith, wlu) trod tor 
a whilo tho sanio i>aths as niysoll". \\c wrilos nndor 
tho dato oi' Novonihor (5. 1 lot't Knishovats on tho 
niornini;' oi' Xmcanhor ',). ITo saw tho Knishovats 
horror Ihroo ilays lator than I. AN'luai 1 K^f't, it 
was gottini;' wim'so, nu)ro woundod ooniini;' in, 
UToaior oongostion. loss caro. ^^'hon 1 last saw it, 
tho ooononiio lit'o oi' Krushovats, its sooial lil'o, its 
citizons, its i^arrison. its rof'nuoos woro howod (Knvn 
as soldoni in tlu^ world's history hnnianity has boon 
howod down. l\vorythini>' holi>ntiinL»- to tho old nor- 
mal lil'o was o-ono. Purplo olouds ol" iivorwholm- 
[uiX "^yoc had intor\onoil, and Krnshovats that day 
was a plaoo now and vorv iorriblo. lingo orowds 
were in tho st roots soarohini;" for IVhhI, i'ov lost 
frionds, for lost familios. Tho lloors oi' ovory avail- 
ahlo hnildini;- woro covered thick with tilthy, bKuidy 
nun. 

Something- miraonlons. sonicthini>' that oham^od 
tho temper o( Krnshovats' monrninLi' tluMisands, 
must have happenoil between \ member 'A and \o- 



KVACIJATIOX SCKNKS 89 

vcn\})cr 0. (fOnJon (lOiHon-Smith says sorncthin/^ 
did — sorricthirjg ifial is a) J lii<; /iiorf: nrnarkahlr- f>(> 
causc il is not al all in acconJari(;o with ariy known 
national characteristic of Ific Scrips, hut, (Jircclly 
contradictory to all tlic cvi(Jcncc I fiavc ever read 
ahout tfiern and wliat I have seen of th(rn in an ex- 
perience wliicfi will, I ficlieve, corri})are favoraf)ly 
in extent with fiis. Mr. (jonJon-Smitli, with true 
liritish directness, says that, on Novernljcr f>, Kru- 
shevats got drunk. lie dof-s not say fie saw orie 
or a do/en or a thousand people drunk in tfie city, 
lie (if)es not leave us ti)e conifort of thinkin/4; tliat 
he may he speakinr^' (A' that irrf.ducihir; (juantity of 
care-free do-nothirj/^s, innocent or vicious, who are 
to !>e found in any crowd, and who without doulit 
would have speedily availed tliernseives of sue}] an 
opfjortunity as he descrihes. No. Krushevats, 
facing greater horror than did Sodom, was like 
that gay ancient city, devf;ifJ of any redeeming 
inhahitant, and tlie sf)ectacle was ho gripping;, 
unusual, strange, and picturesque, such good 
cof)y, in fact, that Mr. Ciordon-Smith presents 
it with evident gusto to tlie Knglish-reading 
world. 

After descrihing a similar condition at ('hiclji- 
vats, he says: 



00 WITH SERBIA INTO KXILK 

\Vhon wo reachoil Krushovnts wo found tho town ap- 
piirontly in liiiili t'ostival. KvorvlnHly sooniod in tlio bost 
of hiunor and i:^:\'\c[\ roigiuil ovovvw l\oro. 

Wo soon ilisoovorod tho onuso. Tho wholo town, men, 
wouion, and childron, had boon drinking imlitnitod quan- 
titios of Fronoh olianipaguo, a trainful of whioli was lying 
in tho station. 

Good God! \Vlion I reached Krnshevats late 
in tlie afternoon I fouml the town apparently an 
unrelieved hell. We eanie in between two trains 
of at least fifty cars each. They were o[)en ears, 
loaded with coal and boxes and — other thinos. As 
numerous as the stars, wounded anil dead men lay 
on the coal-heaps or sprawled over the boxes. They 
had not been there for an hour or two hours; you 
could see that. They had been there for days and 
days. It was pouring rain when I came in, and 
had been for two weeks. jMost of them looked like 
heaps of bloody old clothes that had been picked out 
of a gutter, and their only sign of life was crying for 
food, except now and then one "off his head" would 
rave and screech. Everybody seemed dead, insane, 
or in torment, and hell reigned everywhere. 

We had been kept waiting near Krnshevats for 
seven days before our train could be brought in. 
"We soon discovered the cause." The whole yard 
w^as cranmied with just such trains as the two be- 




\\'r arrivt'd at \hc Colonel's hcaihiuartcrs wet, cold, aiul very 

luiiitirv 




lletuiiee family Iroiii the l'i-<>iitier dnxiiiii all their possessions through 
a street in V'aljevo 



EVACUATION SCENES 93 

tween which we were. The whole town was filled 
with wounded and refugees. "Men, women, and 
children had been drinking unlimited quantities of" 
the bitterest agony human beings could know, and 
trainfuls more of them, half-naked and soaked, 
were dying in the station. 

When our train stopped opposite one of those 
coal-cars, I saw a man who had been lying humped 
in a ball bestir himself. I thought he was a very 
old man. I was doubly sorry for old men in those 
circumstances. His body was worn, his movements 
were listless, his profile was tortured and lined. 
All his companions on the car were inert. I could 
not tell if they were dead. It seemed queer that 
this old soldier should be the only one inclined to 
stir. Then he turned his full face toward me. He 
was not old at all ; twenty five at the most ; he was 
simply done for. He poked a man who lay near. 
"Voda! voda!" he said huskily ("Water! water!"). 
The other sat up, and together they started to 
crawl off the truck. I shouted at them that I 
would bring some "voda"; they paid no heed, not 
understanding. The old young man got to the 
ground, going through strange contortions. His 
companion wavered on the edge a moment, then 
fell heavily and rolled under the truck, either sense- 



94 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

less or dead. The other looked at him, started to 
bend over, then jerked up again with an exclama- 
tion of pain. There was something the matter with 
his chest. A dirty old shirt was tied around him in 
lieu of a bandage. Even as he cried the stained 
shirt became a warm red. He tried to climb be- 
tween the trucks of our train to get to the station 
pump, I suppose. He got half-way, but fell back 
just as we came to him. Before the nurses could 
save him he bled to death. The man under the 
train was dead. They were not alone. We just 
happened to see this. I was told that men went 
carefully before the trains coming into Krushevats 
at night to be sure the tracks were not littered. 
Unpleasant things had happened several times. 
"We found the to\^Ti apparently in high festival. 
Everybody seemed in the best of humor and gaiety 
reigned everywhere." Potent champagne that 
from the svmny vineyards of glorious France ! Po- 
tent champagne which so could dilute the black 
Teutonic brew I saw Krushevats swallow! 

I do not say that Mr. Gordon Gordon- Smith did 
not see Krushevats as he says he did. I was not 
there; he came three days after me. I do say 
that there is nothing at all to make me think his 



EVACUATION SCENES 95 

words are true, and what I have just described to 
make me think they are a damnable lie. 

If exaggeration is used to make more readable 
a dry account of a pink tea or to tell more touch- 
ingly how somebody's mother slipped on a banana- 
peel, I do not quarrel with it. If for the sake of a 
striking paragraph, it is used cynically to vilify a 
heroic people at the moment of their crucifixion, 
nothing gives me more satisfaction than to go far 
out of my way to brand it as stupid, cowardly, dis- 
honest, and contemptible. 



CHAPTER IV 

GETTING AWAY 

OX the nineteenth of Octoher I left Valjevo 
with the "Christiteh ^Mission." This mis- 
sion had heen founded early the preceding spring by 
INI lie. Anna Christitch of London, a member of 
the London "Daily Express" staff. INllle. Chris- 
titch had come out to Valjevo in February, 1915, 
when the typhus epidemic, which began at Valjevo, 
was at its height. The misery of the refugees, the 
filthy cafes, the poor hospitals insufferably crowded 
with dying men, and the gruesome piles of un- 
buried dead that increased too rapidty for inter- 
ment, had made such an impression upon her that 
she returned to London and persuaded her paper 
to start a fund for the relief of the beautiful, 
but stricken, little city. Through the strong ap- 
peal of the cause itself and her own unusual talent 
as a lecturer and writer, a large sum was raised at 
once, and the "Daily Express Camp" was estab- 
lished at Valjevo. 

Before the somewhat sudden advent of the 

96 



GETTIXG AWAY 97 

writer, this mission had differed from others in 
Serbia in that no mere man had any part in it. 
Eleven days before evacuation I descended upon 
it in a Ford, the tonneau of which had been fash- 
ioned, according to my own ideas of coach-build- 
ing, from the packing-case that had brought it 
from far-away Detroit. The work with which I 
had been connected having been completed, I 
humbly petitioned Mme. Christitch, the mother of 
Mile. Christitch, to take on one man at least, 
accompanied by an automobile. I imagine that 
the car, despite the tonneau I had made, won the 
victory, for I became an integral part of the mis- 
sion, being in some hazy way connected with the 
storehouse of refugee supplies. An Austrian 
prisoner, named Franz, a Vienna cook, whom 
]VIme. Christitch requisitioned for the mission 
household, followed me in breaking the decree 
against males. Besides Mme. and Mile. Chris- 
titch, the mission had four nurses. Miss Magnussen 
of Christian ia, Norway, and the Misses Helsby, 
Spooner, and Bunyan of London. 

During the second week of October the mili- 
tary authorities three times warned Mile. Chris- 
titch that Valjevo was seriously threatened and 
advised her to take the mission farther south. 



98 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

With many thousand dollars' worth of relief-sup- 
plies in her storehouse, and with a great need for 
nurses in the hospitals, now overflowing with 
wounded, ^lUe. Christitch would not heed these 
warnings, her course being heartily approved by 
the rest of us. Also she was prone to put down 
all such advice from the military authorities as due 
to over-solicitude on the part of Field-Marshal 
Mishich, who had known her from childhood. 
Even when the other mission, the "Scottish 
Women," was ordered to go, she made a dash for 
headquarters and came back triumphant, announc- 
ing that we could stay so long as the Field-Marshal 
himself remained. 

But on Sunday morning, October 17, an ulti- 
matum came, and I was enjoined to see to the 
packing of some thirty-five thousand dollars' worth 
of blankets, clothing, shoes, hospital-supplies, and 
food-stuffs within forty-eight hours. Much of this 
material Mile. Christitch succeeded in distributing 
among soldiers just leaving for the front, but it 
required eighty-five ox-carts to transport the re- 
mainder to the station, where I saw it loaded on 
six large railway-trucks, the guardian of which I 
thenceforth became. 

Our plan at the moment was simple. We were 



GETTING AWAY 99 

to follow the orders of the military medical chief, 
and he had ordered us to Yagodina on the main 
line of the railway. This meant that at Mladen- 
ovats, twenty kilometers from which fierce fight- 
ing was going on, all our material would have to 
be shifted from the narrow-gage to the broad-gage 
cars, involving a loss of valuable time. But this 
material had been bought with public money, 
and Mile. Christitch was not the kind to abandon 
it lightly. This motive governed her actions 
throughout the time I was with her, and finally 
resulted in the capture of her mother and herself. 

It was late Tuesday afternoon when the eight 
of us, the four nurses, the Christitches, Franz and 
I splashed down to the depot through knee-deep 
mud under a heavy downpour. Our train was to 
leave at seven, but it did not go until nearly mid- 
night. In the meantime we had the honor of mak- 
ing the very interesting acquaintance of the "Little 
Sergeant," the youngest officer, as well as the 
youngest soldier, in the Serbian army. 

He is — or, now, perhaps was — a real sergeant. 
On his diminutive soldier's coat he wore three gold 
stars, and in lieu of a sword he carried an Austrian 
bayonet, and in lieu of a rifle a Russian cavalry 
carbine. A full-sized, well-filled cartridge-belt 



100 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

was slung over his shoulders, because it would 
easily have encircled his baby waist three times. 
He was ten years old, and had been in the service 
for "a long time." He had asked and obtained a 
leave to go home just before all the trouble began, 
and now he was answering the hurried summons 
sent out to all soldiers on leave to return to their 
regiments at once. His home was three days' walk 
from Valjevo, the nearest railway point, and he 
had walked the whole way alone; but he was late, 
and was afraid of exceeding the time allowed for 
soldiers to return. He said if he reached his sta- 
tion too late, he "would be shot as a deserter, and 
rightly so." Then his regiment "would be dis- 
graced." He had no money, but did not need any. 
At the military stations he demanded his loaf of 
bread as a Serbske vrenik, and got it. As for 
sleeping, well, any cafe-owner would not refuse a 
Serbian soldier the hospitality of his floor. 

Our train showed no signs of departing, so we 
took him into the town and gave him dinner at the 
hotel. He ate tremendously, but seriously, pre- 
occupied, as a man would have been, and at times 
discussing military affairs. Despite all his efforts, 
we detected a slight limp, and found his small feet 
in a frightful condition. His opanki had not 




'•"Oim^ 




"A //;«/( dues not (lie ;i liiiiiilrcil times," saiil U.' J.i!'!'- ,Scrji;cunl 




Aliiic. L'iiii,~lilili (li.->liibuliii}i leiicl .^upplic.^ ;tt V'uljevo 



GETTING AWAY 103 

fitted well and were nearly worn out. Blisters and 
stone-bruises were in great evidence. To his 
boundless, but unexpressed, delight, we were able 
to give him a new pair. 

Every one plied him with questions, which he 
answered slowly, taking great care as to his words. 
Whom had he left at home? Why, his mother and 
little sister, who was five years older than himself. 
His father and brother were in the army. When 
he went home on leave he was able to cut wood and 
bring water, see to the prune-trees and feed the 
pigs ; but most of the time the women had to do this, 
which was very bad. But what could one do? 
His country was at war, and that meant that men 
must fight. Soon, though, when his own regiment, 
with which none other could compare, had admin- 
istered a much-needed thrashing to the Suabas, he 
would return home and help build up the farm. 
Yes, his father was a soldier of the hne in his regi- 
ment, the bravest man in the regiment. He him- 
self had shot well, and had been cautious in the 
trenches, and so had been promoted above his 
father, who now, according to military discipline, 
had to salute his son. But he never allowed this; 
he always forestalled his father, and at the same 
time conserved discipline by seizing the hand that 



104 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

would have saluted and kissing it. His regiment 
was somewhere near Semendria, but exactly where 
he did not care to say, because there were spies all 
about — this with a wary glance at me. 

As we waited in the smoky little station, crowded 
with refugees, he stood as straight as an arrow 
before the seated ladies, refusing a seat. He was 
a Serbske vrenik with a party of civilians who had 
been kind to him, and while men of that party had 
to stand, he would not sit. Blisters and bruises 
might go whence they came, to the devil. But as 
it grew late, an enemy he could not conquer at- 
tacked him. He had risen at four that morning, 
and it was now ten at night. With the tactfulness 
born of long years of diplomatic life in European 
capitals, Mme. Christitch quietly made room on the 
bench beside her, which a moment later the "Little 
Sergeant" unconsciously filled. Almost at once 
his head sank to her lap, his hands sought hers, and 
a last, convincing, incontestable proof that he was 
a real Serbske vrenik was given: a snore, loud, 
resonant, manly, broke on the watching crowd. 

Two hours later, when our train whistled, I gath- 
ered up a sergeant of the Serbian army, carbine, 
ammunition, sword, knapsack, and all, and carried 
him without resistance to the freight-truck in which 



GETTING AWAY 105 

we were to travel, and laid him, covered with my 
blankets, on a soft bale of clothing. I hope that 
if ever in the distant future I shall so hold a boy 
more closely akin to me, I can be as proud of my 
burden as I was that night. Shortly before our 
ways parted next day we asked him if he was not 
afraid to go back to the trenches. 

"A man does not die a hundred times," he replied 
quietly. 

I almost find myself hoping that in the horrible 
carnage which occurred at Semendria a few days 
later a bullet found the "Little Sergeant" after 
some momentary victory, some gallant charge of 
his beloved regiment. Life had been so simple for 
him! His country was at war; she could not be 
wrong; all true men must fight. And he had 
known her only in glorious victory. 

"Shogum, Americanske hraat" ("Good-by, 
American brother"), he murmured when we sep- 
arated. 

We began that night a mode of living which for 
fifteen days we pursued almost uninterruptedly. 
For this length of time we lived, moved, and had 
our very excited beings in a railway freight-truck. 
We cooked there, dined there, and slept on piles 
of soft bales. We took our recreation mainly by 



106 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

making wild dashes to the station pumps for a 
drink or a "wash" between stops, or by counting 
the hundreds of refugees that piled in, hung on, and 
crowded around every train on every siding. 
After a trying delay at INIladenovats, during 
which the battle-line came appreciably nearer, we 
got on the main line, and succeeded in procuring 
enough trucks to leave one virtually empty for 
general uses and a sleeping-apartment for the 
ladies, while another, nearly full, afforded space for 
me, Franz, and Tichomir, a young soldier whom we 
had decided to take with us. 

Franz and Tichomir were about the same age, 
and the fact that Tichomir's father, more than 
sixty five and not a soldier, had been taken from 
his home into Austria as a "hostage," and had there 
died from exposure, did not keep the two boys from 
becoming boon companions. Thej'^ used to sit 
about by the hour, smoking my cigarettes and guy- 
ing each other in a terrific jargon of German and 
Serbian. Tichomir was a fine samj^le of the young 
Serb, with a face that would have made most Euro- 
pean princes look like farm-laborers, and which 
made it quite impossible to fall out of humor with 
him, although his aversion to anything savoring of 
work made it impossible to keep in humor with him, 



GETTING AWAY 107 

a trying combination! Franz, on the other hand, 
looked hke the stupid, well-meaning cherub that he 
was. He had a voice like a German lullaby, with 
which he was always assuring "Gnadige Frau 
Christitch" that the ^Magyars were the "Sehre 
schlectest Menschen am Welt'* while privately he 
confided to me that he wanted only one thing on 
earth, which, put crudely, was to thumb his nose 
at the illustrious Emperor whose name he bore, and 
with the wife he had left behind in Austria to go 
to America for a new start. He did America the 
honor of thinking it the onty countrj^ left worth 
living in, and altogether ingratiated himself into 
my affections to an alarming extent. Incidentally 
he ably upheld the best traditions of Vienna cook- 
ery, and had about as much business in a battle- 
line as one of Titian's little angels would have in 
Tammany Hall. All in all, thej^ were a horribly 
lazy, highly diverting pair. Very probably Tich- 
omir has been killed, and Franz has starved to 
death. 

We were not allowed to stay at Yagodina, but 
were ordered to Chupriya until further notice. 
Here several diverting things occurred, not least 
among them being that we slept in beds once more, 
the municipal hospital having opened its doors to 



108 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

us. Sleeping in that hard hospital bed has since 
become an event to me. I slept in it for the last 
time on the twenty-fifth of October, and with the 
exception of two nights a few days later, the next 
time that I slept in anything that even looked like 
a bed was on the nineteenth of December in Rome. 
The catalogue of my resting-places during this 
period comprises hill-tops, pastures, drink-shop 
floors, flooded corn-fields, snow-covered river- 
banks, hay-lofts, harems, ^lontenegrin and Al- 
banian huts, Turkish cemeteries, the seasick deck 
of a seasick ship, pursued by five submarines, and 
the floor of a 'icagon-lit. 

Late in the afternoon of the day we arrived at 
Chupriya, ]Mlle. Christitch and I were at the depot 
seeing to the shunting of our trucks, for permission 
had been granted to leave our material on them for 
a few days until we could decide what to do. The 
station itself, the yard about it, and the tracks were 
covered with thousands of homeless women and 
children. We were standing perhaps a hundred 
yards from the station building, talking, when we 
noticed people looking up, and detected the unmis- 
takable hum of an aeroplane. It came out of the 
east, a tiny golden speck that caught the setting 
sun's rays and gleamed against the sky at an alti- 



GETTING AWAY 109 

tude of perhaps three thousand feet. But it was 
coming lower, as we could plainly see and hear. 
JVIany of the refugees were from Belgrade and 
Kragujevats, both of which had suffered severely 
from aeroplanes. These refugees immediately 
became panic-stricken, the women weeping, the 
children screaming. At such an altitude, when an 
aeroplane gets anywhere nearly straight overhead, 
it appears to be directly so, and you can no more 
run out from under it than you can get out from 
under a star. One can only stand and wait, grin- 
ning or glum, according to temperament and pre- 
sentment. 

The men in the machine, which was Austrian, 
could now be seen as tiny specks, and they ap- 
peared to be directly over us. We knew, of course, 
that they were aiming at the station, but that did 
not help the incontestable evidence of our eyes that 
they were straight over our heads, and bomb- 
droppers are not adept at throwing curves. It was 
our first raid. We saw the thing hang almost 
motionless for what seemed many minutes as it 
turned more to the south, and watching intently, 
we saw nothing, but heard a sharp whiz as of a cane 
whirled swiftly through the air, and then a deafen- 
ing report came that stunned us a little. At the 



110 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

same time anti-air-craft guns began their fusillades. 
When the dust and smoke lifted, there were hun- 
dreds of women and children trembling with fear, 
and less than fifty feet from us what had been a 
little bo}?^ of twelve and an old soldier barely alive. 
Unhiu't, the aeroplane sailed away into the sunset. 

After four days at Chupriya, orders came to 
proceed to Krushevats, there to shift once more to 
the narrow-gage and go to Kraljevo, which had 
become the temporary abode of the Government. 
Ordinarily this journey M'ould require four or five 
hours. Ten days later we left the railway at Tres- 
tenik, a station not far from Kraljevo, having never 
come to our destination at all. So great was the 
congestion in the railway-yard at Krushevats that 
for seven days we waited on a siding three miles 
outside the place before our train could be brought 
in. This siding led to one of the largest powder 
factories in Serbia, and our train stood very near 
it. Every daj' hostile aeroplanes came over, hov- 
ering like tiny flies far above the factory, which 
was going at full blast. But at the four corners 
of the place anti-air-craft guns poked their ugly 
muzzles skyward, and the Austrian aviators dared 
not come low enough to drop bombs. 

The highway ran past our car-door, giving us 



GETTING AWAY 113 

endless glimpses into the life of the fleeing popula- 
tion, each a little drama in itself. One day six 
limousines came by, filled with men in silk hats and 
frock-coats. It was the cabinet fleeing from the 
Bulgarians before Nish. I saw Pashich, the great- 
est of Balkan statesmen, looking rather wearily, 
I thought, out of the window, old, worn, worried. 
These were the men who had had to face Austria's 
ultimatum, and who were now just beginning to 
face the consequences of their refusal to surrender 
the liberty of their nation. 

After we had finally been taken into Krushevats, 
Mile. Christitch and I were walking down the 
tracks into the town one day when we saw a new 
eight-cylinder American touring-car. In it we 
recognized Admiral Troubridge and Major Ell- 
iott, the British military attache. They had just 
missed the train which was to take them on to 
Kraljevo and intended going on in an automobile. 
As we were talking, however, word came that the 
road was almost impassable, and the Serbian 
officer in attendance went to secure a special train 
for them. I remember my wonder that in such a 
bedlam of congestion a special train was still pos- 
sible. They got out, and we walked up the tracks 
together. I had met Admiral Troubridge before. 



114 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

lie is a perfect picture of an admiral. His typi- 
ically British face, ruddy complexion, and snow- 
white hair, combined with a certain easy-going, 
almost lackadaisical air, make him just like an 
admiral on the stage. JNIme. Christitch had given 
me a highly interesting account of a conversation 
which she, her daughter, and the nurses had had 
with him at Chupriya, but which I did not hear. 

The Admiral, then fresh from the bombardment 
of Belgrade, had assured them that the Serbs were 
making no resistance "worth speaking of." They 
were abandoning everything, he said, and were 
suing for peace, which, he assured the ladies, would 
be concluded within fifteen days. He said that the 
firing we heard was a mere pretense, that no serious 
fighting was going on since the fall of Belgrade. 
He did not tell whence came the thousands of 
wounded and dying which we had seen in Valjevo 
and right there in Krushevats, and which we were 
soon to hear about from the nurses at Kragujevats. 
These thousands excluded all those from the Bul- 
garian battle-line, about which, so far as I know, 
the Admiral did not express himself, and excluded 
the unparalleled (for the number engaged) 
slaughter that occurred at Zajechar and Pirot. 
He said that this peace, which was to come 



GETTING AWAY 115 

in fifteen days, was the only thing left to Serbia; 
he expressed it as his opinion, in very much 
the same words that I use here, that the diplomacy 
of England had been so stupid, so ignorant, so 
criminally careless that the Serbs would be justified 
in making a separate peace as a "slap in England's 
face." He added that all the foregoing summer 
he had been begging his Government to send out 
reinforcements to him on the Danube. He also 
told us that he understood the Germans were act- 
ing in a most conciliatory manner toward the Serbs 
in an endeavor to placate them. The policy which 
they had followed in Belgium had not been fol- 
lowed in Serbia, he said. These remarks by a 
British admiral of wide note, commander-in-chief 
of the only force which England sent to Serbia 
until the final attack, seemed to have impressed the 
ladies deeply. Made, as they were, to Mme. 
Christitch, who has given thirty years of her life 
to Serbia, and whose husband is a well-known 
figure in Balkan diplomacy, and to her daughter, 
who since 1912 has devoted most of her time to 
her native country, they naturally were not soon 
forgotten, and, I feel sure, that an hour after the 
Admiral left I had a substantially verbatim report 
of them. 



11(» WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

Although I had not met Colonel Phillips before, 
I knew something of him. I had heard of him as 
governor of Seutari during the period of the forma- 
tion of Albania as a kingdom, and as a man who 
knew the Balkans "like a book." He is most 
things the Admiral is not. He is tall, with no 
superfluous flesh, has a red face and sand}^ mus- 
tache. He is army all over, whereas the Admiral 
is navy all over, and could be at home only on a 
bridge — a stage bridge, perhaps, but still a bridge. 
Before coming to Serbia, Colonel l'hinii)s had 
served for several months on General French's 
staff in France. The Admiral seemed to me 
always ineffably bored, the Colonel always irra- 
tionally irritated. 

Standing on the railway-track, waiting for his 
train. Colonel Phillips talked to me. If he thought 
about the matter at all, he may have known in an 
uncertain manner that I was supposed to be an 
American who claimed to have been engaged in 
relief work, and who at the moment was traveling 
with the Christitch jNlission. He could not have 
known more, and two hostile aeroplanes that 
shortly before had appeared just as the Crown 
Prince's train was starting — the train which the 
Colonel should have caught — testified an almost 




I u-hoiuir and Miiiir o\ Ins rclatixc- 




(.ionoral I'utnik. Sfrl)ia's olilosi licncral and a p(ii)ular hero 



GETTING AWAY 119 

uncanny system of espionage on the part of the 
enemy. This seemingly did not worry Colonel 
Phillips, and, as for me, having the Admiral's 
remarks as a precedent, I was prepared for any- 
thing from a British officer in Serbia. To use a 
homely simile, the Colonel reminded me of nothing 
so much as the safety-valve of an overcharged 
boiler when suddenly released. I did not release 
it with skilful questioning. A wooden Indian 
could have interviewed the Colonel that morning. 
Already two weeks of the tremendous pressure of 
the retreat had blunted my journalistic tendencies; 
the Colonel awakened them from their supine 
slumber. 

He opened the conversation with the brief re- 
mark that the Ser})ian General Staff were idiots, 
a statement which, considering such men as Putnik, 
Stepanovich, and JNIishich, might, to say the least, 
be open to argument. Like the Admiral, he said 
that they were suing for peace, which would be 
made within a fortnight. He said that they had 
"completely lost their heads" and had "nothing 
even resembling an organized plan of campaign." 
They and the Serbian army were running away as 
fast as possible, according to him. He told me 
that "the French military attache and myself. 



120 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

backed by our respective Governments, have sub- 
mitted a plan of campaign to the Serbian General 
Staff, and so far they have refused to consider it." 
Those were his exact words. Then apparently to 
prove the fitness of his plan, which was backed by 
England and France, he proceeded to detail that 
plan to me, an utter stranger! It consisted in 
brief of abandoning all of northern Serbia at once 
and retreating south in a desperate attempt to hold 
the Orient Railway, an impossibility at the time 
we talked. I never saw the French attache, so 
have no way of deciding if what the Colonel said is 
true. 

The Colonel then discussed briefly, much to my 
interest, the position of England in the war. He 
said that up to the present England had saved her- 
self all she could, and had attempted to organize 
her forces so perfectly that in the spring or early 
summer of 1916 she would be able to hurl a vast 
army against the western German lines at a time 
when Germany would be beginning to show ex- 
haustion. 

With scarcely a break in his speech, the Colonel 
turned his attention to the King of Montenegro, 
whom he taxed with certainly having a secret un- 
derstanding with Austria. He characterized his 



GETTING AWAY 121 

Montenegrin majesty as a "knave and a rascal," 
and told me that he, Colonel Phillips, did not dare 
to go into INIontenegro now for fear of his life be- 
cause in past years he had so infuriated the King. 

At this point it occurred to him to ask what I 
had been doing, and when I replied with a brief 
account of relief -work among the refugees of Bos- 
nia, he made some observations on such work. He 
accused both his own countrymen and the Serbians 
with gross dishonesty in the administration of 
charitable funds, and, as for my refugees, they 
were n't due to the war at all, but had infested the 
mountains in that same state of starvation "for ten 
thousand years more or less." 

Then, and then only, was I guilty of my first 
question. I mentioned something about the United 
States. With the courtesy and kindness which he 
had shown to me throughout, he begged to be ex- 
cused from "discussing your country, as I would 
certainly hurt your feelings." Now, would not 
this make any normal American curious? I 
pressed the subject, saying that I thought I could 
stand it, as I was far awajr from home and might 
never see the old place again, anyway. I do not 
pretend to have understood his position in regard 
to America. The one concrete thing I could get 



122 WITH SEKBIA INTO EXILE 

at was that we were a nation of conscienceless dol- 
lar-snatchers, who refused to fight hecause it cost 
money, "in spite of the infinite debt of gratitude" 
we owed to England. Instead of helping her, he 
said, we were deliberately taught to hate her. He 
said he knew the United States "like a book," had 
traveled extensively North and South, and had 
found that in our schools we systematically "taught 
our children to hate England." I murmured I 
was Southern. He said that in the South we hated 
Englislmien as we did "niggers." I did not say 
yes and I did not say no to this. I remarked that 
there "were 'niggers' and 'niggers,' " and so, doubt- 
less, when I had met more Englishmen, I should 
find they were not all the same sort. 

Then, at the risk of displaying crass ignorance, 
I asked what our debt of gratitude to England 
might be. He thought a moment verj' studiously, 
and then remarked that we spoke the same lan- 
guage. I could not resist the temptation that came 
to me. "On the level," I asked, "what are you 
handing me?" But I had to translate for him. 

Next, with fear and trembling, remembering his 
position as a member of General French's staff, I 
turned the steam on France. I received only two 
statements, and these were exceedingly enigmatic. 



GETTING AWAY 123 

In their proper order they are, "France, Hke your 
own country, has thought only of money in this 
war," and, "As regards men, France is now ex- 
hausted." Let him who wishes to rush in, attempt 
a reconcihation of these two statements. Colonel 
Phillips made them; I report them here. 

The Colonel confided to me that he and Admiral 
Troubridge "had been cruelly punished by being 
sent to Serbia" because they had too emphatically 
and openly criticized England's policy at the 
Dardanelles. 

By this time the Colonel seemed a bit relieved, 
and boyishly told me of a lovely little prank of his. 
As matters of taste can never be argued, I shall 
leave each reader to form his own opinion without 
any admonition from me. The Colonel said that 
at last, when he was forced to leave Belgrade, just 
before the Germans were due to reach the house 
where he lived, he prepared a little welcome for 
them in his sitting-room. At the grand piano, 
which he had procured from some ruined home pre- 
viously, he seated a skeleton, with grinning skull 
turned toward the door and the fleshless hands lying 
on the keys. He had draped the skeleton in a Ger- 
man uniform and had placed upon its head a Ger- 
man helmet. 



124 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

When at last the special train which the Serbian 
Government had produced on thirty minutes' no- 
tice appeared to bear him away, the Colonel cor- 
dially shook my hand, saying he had enjoyed meet- 
ing and talking with me. 

Thus spoke the British military attache in Serbia, 
whose position entitled him to the confidence of the 
General Staff on whom the fate of a nation hung, 
to me an absolute stranger, when the country he 
had been sent out to aid was facing as awful a fate 
as any country ever faced, and was facing it alone 
either because of the weakness, stupidity, or treach- 
ery of her allies. 

I report these two interviews because they were 
interesting to me and so, I think, will prove to 
others. I do not feel that there is any breach of 
confidence in this. The sentiments expressed by 
these two distinguished British officers were not ex- 
pressed in confidence at all, — would to heaven they 
had been! — and, furthermore, were expressed by 
them to numbers of people on different occasions. 
They were the common talk among the English 
during the retreat. Certainly, I have little or no 
feeling toward these gentlemen one way or the 
other. In trying to write the story of Serbia, I 
cannot omit one of her major afflictions. 



GETTING AWAY 125 

Finally, in the night, we were jerked out of 
Krushevats. Jerked is the proper word, for at 
this time the wide-spread congestion had called into 
service many locomotive engineers who perhaps had 
seen locomotives before, but were certainly not on 
speaking terms with the fine arts of coupling and 
switching. The terrible bumps we got were really 
dangerous, especially in the men's car, where every 
tremor threatened to bring down huge bales of 
philanthropic shirts upon our heads. We heard of 
one man who was standing with his head stuck out 
of the door of a freight-truck when a sudden bump 
slammed the sliding-door shut and decapitated him. 
After that we kept our heads inside, preferring the 
threatening shirts. 

At Stalach we were delayed several hours for 
some unknown reason, but had a most sociable time 
receiving in our "villa box-car" several distin- 
guished guests; for Stalach is the junction of the 
line from Nish with the Kraljevo line, and at this 
moment was crowded with the Serbian haute 
monde. That well known soldier. Captain Petro- 
nijevich, who had been detailed by his Government 
as Sir Ralph Paget's attendant, came to our menage 
filled with some gleeful secret. He sat about on 
packing-cases, and made witty remarks with a dis- 



126 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

tinctly gloating air that mystified us until, like a 
magician, he produced three cans of pate de foie 
gras. His triumph did not last long. From be- 
hind a pile of baggage I drew two wonderful roast 
ducks that Franz, with great skill and loving care 
had done to a turn on our tiny little stove. So lux- 
ury ran riot at Stalach. 

' Sir Ralph's "country place" was down the track 
about a hundred yards. Numerous army-blankets 
and I'ugs strewn about gave it a wild Oriental air 
worthy of Essad Pasha, but Sir Ralph had no 
stove. Altogether our car had the honors of the 
day. 

Just as we were leaving Stalach a young officer 
leaped into our truck. He was gloriously clean, 
flashing, magnificent. I am sorry to have lost his 
name. He was responsible for all that part of the 
railway, a terrific task at this time. He could give 
news, and became so engrossed with the ladies that 
he did not notice the bumps which told us we were 
starting. AVhen he did "come to," we were making 
good time a mile out of Stalach, and he had to be 
back in Stalach. I swung open the door, and he, 
producing a pocket flash-light, stood in the opening 
a moment searching the ground below. There was 
a continuous ditch, filled to the brim with black 



GETTING AWAY 129 

water. Only an instant he paused, then disap- 
peared into the night, and a loud splash was the 
last we ever heard of him. 

That night oui- train was stopped at Trestcnik, 
for Kraljevo had suddenly heeome one of the most 
dangerous spots in Serhia. A sliort counsel he- 
tween Mile. Christiteh and me resulted in the fol- 
lowing arrangements. 

With her mother, who could hardly l)e exposed 
to the hardships of an ox-cart retreat, she would 
stay at Trestenik for two days to distri])ute among 
the needy soldiers and civilians and hc^spitals the 
supplies to which she had held so tenaciously. The 
Government could give her two small ox-carts to go 
to Alexandrovats, which lay ahout forty kilometers 
to the southwest. It was arranged that I should 
take these carts, and transport the three British 
nurses, with as much tinned foods and hiscuits as 
we could carry. If at Alexandrovats I found an 
English or French mission in retreat, I was to hand 
over the nurses to them, and return to see of what 
service 1 might he at Trestenik. If there were no 
such missions, I should wait three days, unless the 
danger was pressing, in the hope that Mile. Chris- 
titeh and her mother would come on and join us. 
If they did not come, or if I was forced to go sooner, 



130 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

I was to accompany the nurses until 1 found an 
English mission or until I could see Sir Ralph 
Paget, who was the representative of the British 
Serhian Relief and had heen detailed to look after 
the English missions. As I was acquainted with 
Sir Ralph, and as he was an old friend of JNllle. 
Christitch, once I could get to him the safety of 
the English nurses would be assured, JNIlle. Chris- 
titch felt, and it was the safety of her nurses which 
was always the first thought with her. I give this 
arrangement in some detail because of later inci- 
dents. 

In the da^\Ti of November 4, while it was raining 
heavily, we said good-by to the Christitchcs and 
JNIiss JNIagnussen, who, being neutral, would re- 
main with them, and started on our journey. 

In company with 3Ille. Christitch I had gone to 
the conmiandant of the place. I had heard him ex- 
plain in no uncertain terms the very threatened po- 
sition of Trestenik. Six weeks later, when in 
Rome, I had the pleasure of bringing to Colonel 
Christitch the first authentic news of his wife and 
daughter. His first question was not of their prob- 
able danger under the invader; it was simply: 

"Was my daughter brave?" 

"Your daughter is a Serb," I replied. 



GETTING AWAY 131 

"Thanks," he said, and the expression on his face 
showed that my answer needed no elucidation. 

The three women who were to endure in the suc- 
ceeding tragic weeks so much physical discomfort 
and mental strain, were true women of England, 
although one of them had spent much time in 
America. The youngest and tiniest of them is a 
direct descendant of the great creator of "Pilgrim's 
Progress," a picture of whom she used to wear con- 
tinually in a locket, and from whose allegory she 
frequently quoted a paragraph apt for her own 
wanderings. Then there was the very deft nurse 
w4io in London had been the head of the nursing 
force of a hospital and whose whole life was 
wrapped up in her blessed profession, as in fact 
was the case with all three of them. I envied many 
times their professional attitude toward the innu- 
merable sufferers which we saw later, always know- 
ing what to do and how to do it, while I could only 
pity. I think no woman ever lived who was pluck- 
ier and more uncomplaining than the eldest of the 
three, a woman well past middle-age with delib- 
erate, gentle manners and the deceptive appear- 
ance of being too frail to support even undue exer- 
tion in ordinary routine. To think w^hat she went 
through and how she stood it! Had I known on 



132 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

that dreary morning leaving Trestenik what lay 
before her I honestly would not have believed that 
she would ever see England again. When the fol- 
lowing days forced upon me the realization of what 
we were in for, there was always a cold dread within 
me of what I felt strongly was inevitable for her. 
My solicitude was unnecessary. At Brindisi, after 
it was all over, she seemed just the same fragile 
being who tramped out of Trestenik. 

From the very first each of them took the great- 
est pride in tramping well and "keeping fit." Oc- 
casional vain wails for a "wash" were the extent of 
their complaints. Never a day passed that each of 
them did not come to me separately and say, "Is n't 
so-and-so walking splendidly! I was so afraid for 
her, but is n't she holding up, though!" There was 
a keen rivalry between them as to their powers of 
endurance, and none of them would ride — when it 
was possible — unless I made myself so unpleasant 
about it that they took pity on me and acquiesced. 
They presupposed in me a vast knowledge of the 
country we traversed and of woodcraft in general, 
to which I could not lay the least claim, but I took 
care not to disillusion them any more than my mani- 
fest ignorance made necessary. 

It was not long before we came to know each 



GETTING AWAY 133 

other's foibles and how to soothe or ruffle one an- 
other. One of us, for instance, was, oh, very ortho- 
dox, and two of us were — well, shockingly free in 
our view as to the possibility of miracles, let us 
say. So on many a night in the savage wilderness 
high discussions flew around the camp-fire where we 
lay. We laughed at each other, talked at and 
about each other, and were, in a word, for many 
weeks comrades of the road. 

There were no covers on the miserable carts, and 
as they were full of supplies the women walked 
most of the time. We had been told that it was 
one day to Alexandrovats, but hour after hour we 
climbed a tangle of hills over mere trails knee-deep 
in mud. The oxen were small and, when night 
came, were worn out. Having no interpreter, I, 
of course, could communicate with my drivers only 
by signs, and the old boys were not particularly 
bright at understanding things they did not want 
to. Tichomir, whom we had taken with us, I 
had sent ahead with letters to secure accommoda- 
tions. 

When it grew dark the drivers insisted on stop- 
ping, while I insisted on pushing on, thinking it 
could not be much farther to the town. Fortu- 
nately, the rain had stopped, and the stars shone. 



134. WITH SEUBIA INTO EXILE 

but the road grew worse. It skirted the edge of a 
preeipiee. There was no rail, and the earth eruni- 
bled away at the shghtest pressure. Soon the 
drivers developed open hostility, holding t'recjuent 
whispered eonferenees. The earts stuek in nuid- 
holes t)t'ten. and we had literally to put our shoul- 
ders to the Avheel and help the weakened oxen. 
Then they wouUl go only if some one led the front 
pair. This the drivers refused to do, heeause it 
neeessitated wading eontinually in slush up to the 
knees. So the task devolved upon nie. 

The women were worn out, of eourse, and nerv- 
ous, and distrusted the drivers intensely. For sev- 
eral hours I was able to foive the drivers to go i>u, 
and about ten o'eloek, when we turned a eorner, a 
blaze of light eame to us. It was a large army- 
transport camp, and 1 thought we had better stay 
there for the night. 

The drivers immediately sat down and refused 
to move, the oxen following their example. I 
wished the carts brought out of the road to the 
camp-ground, and, losing my temper, started to 
seize the lead-rope of one of the oxen. Five min- 
utes later I recovered my breath. I was lying in 
a mud-hole about fifteen feet from the ox, and on 
my right side, along the ribs, my clothing was cut 



GETTIXC; AWAY 135 

almost as if with a knife. There was a shallow 
gash in the flesh, aruJ orjc hand was hadly cut. I 
was a ffjass of cvjl-srnelling murj. 'J'ljf; ox had 
failed to get his horn irj far enough trj do any real 
damage. When 1 got my f>reatlj fjack, discretion 
seemed tlie hest cue for me, so I waded through the 
mire to one of the blazing camp-fires. 

There was a typical group about it. The ox- 
drivers of Serbia are as nondescript and picturesque 
a crowd as can fje found anvwliere on earth. I 
knew the Serbian word for Knglish woman, and, 
pointing to the road, remarked that tbere were 
tljree Knglish women who must pass tljc night 
somewhere, and I made it evident I thought their 
fire was a pretty grxxl place. One young fellow 
of about twenty, I should judge, extremely hand- 
some, but in woeful rags and without any shoes, 
rose at once despite the fact that he had walked all 
day in the rain and was then cooking his meager 
supper as he dried himself by the fire. lie smiled 
as few can smile, and, muttering, "English sisters," 
came with me. It meant that he would get wet 
again crossing two bad mud-holes, but he came to 
our cart and wanted to carry the nurses over one by 
one. We seated ourselves about their fire and of- 
fered them a tin of preser\^ed mutton, 'i'hey had 



136 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

almost nothing to eat, and this was a rare dehcacy 
for them, but we had to force them to take it. Such 
are the most ignorant of the Serbians. 

Our new protector went back to our carts to give 
the ox-di'ivers some well-needed words, and, re- 
turning, ransacked the large camp for hay for the 
women to lie on. He had been walking sixteen 
hours, he was wet, and he had not had his supper, 
yet his manner was charming as he offered this hay, 
much as Lord Chesterfield might have placed a 
chair for his queen. Strange as we must have 
seemed to them, dropping out of the darkness like 
that, they betrayed not the slightest trace of curi- 
osity, observing always an impeccable attitude of 
careful attention to oui* every want. 

There was one tall, lithe Gipsy among them who 
appeared to be chief baker. He had long, straight 
black hair, deep black eyes, and the complexion of 
a Spaniard, while his teeth were perfect, and al- 
ways in evidence in the sliest sort of laugh. He 
had a mellow tenor voice, with which he continually 
sang songs that were, I am sure, very naughty, he 
was so obviously a good, gay devil. He was like 
a Howard Pyle pirate. There was a red turban, 
such as the people of the Sanjak wear, around his 
head. His shirt was of soft yellow stuff, in tatters, 



GETTING AWAY 137 

and his trousers were of a rich, reddish-brown 
homespun. He had no shoes, which did not matter 
much, because his feet were very shapely. 

Before hirn he spread a heavy gunny sack, very 
clean, doubled four times, and on this he poured a 
little mound of wheat-flour. Then from a brown 
earthen jug he poured some water on the flour and 
added a little lard and salt. For some time he 
kneaded the dough on the gunny sack, and at last 
patted it into a round disk about two inches thick. 
Raking away the coals from the center of the fire, 
he uncovered a space of baked earth thoroughly 
cleansed by the heat and placed his cake there, cov- 
ering it first with hot ashes and then with live coals. 
In half an hour he produced a loaf beautifully 
baked and not at all unpalatable. But one felt all 
the time that instead of baking bread he should be 
clambering up the sides of brave ships and kid- 
napping beautiful maidens. 

This was our first night spent under the stars. 
We all slept comfortably around the fire, and next 
morning had a wash from an old well near by, our 
protector bringing us water in a jug. He flatly 
refused any gift of money, and went away shouting 
gaily to us, unaware that I had slipped something 
into his pocket. He was one of the "barbaric 



138 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

Serbs" whom political propaganda has so long vili- 
fied. 

While our carts were being brought up, one of 
the nurses suddenly uttered an exclamation of 
pleasure and pointed to the western horizon. We 
were on a high hill, and the mountains shouldered 
away on every hand like an innumerable crowd of 
giants. Blue and gold, gray and green, they rolled 
off from the early sun to the dim west, where, out 
of crowding mists, a solitarj^ snow-capped peak 
stood covered with a perfect Alpine glow. Being 
English women, the nurses had always a keen eye 
for the scenic side of Serbia, and were delighted 
with this first snow mountain. But I shall never 
forget the feeling that the chilly peak brought to 
me. A distinct vision came to me on that sunny 
hillside of bleak mountains in a storm through 
which unnumbered thousands of women, old men, 
and children struggled, freezing and starving. 
Mile. Christitch's earnest words came back, "You 
will go through INIontenegro to the sea with them, 
if necessary, will you not?" Looking at them now, 
I wondered if it would not be a death-sentence for 
these women who were accustomed only to a shel- 
tered London existe;ice. But I cast the vision 
away as hysterical, which seems very ridiculous to 



GETTING AWAY 139 

me now, for, if I had spent the whole sunny day 
dreaming horrors, I still would not have begun to 
comprehend what soon was to be reality. 

Not until three o'clock in the afternoon did we 
come to Alexandrovats. As we entered the town, 
a French aeroplane was trying vainly to rise from 
the open field by the roadside, and a little farther 
on we saw a heap of splinters, which was all that 
was left of one that had fallen the day before. 
When we got into the town we heard rumors that 
Krushevats had fallen, and I know now that Tres- 
tenik was taken by a patrol on the same day. Iso- 
lated as it was, Alexandrovats already was moved 
by a great wave of unrest. 



CHAPTER V 

SPY FEYEB. 

AS if to compensate us for the loss of our carts 
at Alexandrovats, we made a valuable acqui- 
sition to our personnel. Driving up to the spot- 
less httle cottage that Tichomir had procured for 
us through the letters he bore, a very short, portly 
little man, wearing a bright-checked suit and loud 
golf-cap, rushed out to us, waving a light yellow 
cane and shouting in English. This gentleman 
would have excited comment at Coney Island, and 
Alexandrovats is not Coney Island. It is pro- 
vincial even for Serbia, yet the man who came to 
meet us was a cosmopolite. There could be no 
doubt of it ; it fairly oozed from him. The sound of 
English was more welcome than I can say, for, 
while letters had made things easy here, I had none 
for the future, and the constantly louder sound of 
cannon during the last two daj^s had made me ex- 
ceedingly skeptical as to the Christitches ever re- 
joining us. 

140 



SPY FEVER 141 

I will not give this gentleman's name, for it 
might possibly cause him inconvenience, and he cer- 
tainly did all in his power for us — for himself and 

us. We shall call him Mr. B . He is very 

well known in Belgrade, the head of a large firm 
there, and the representative of some thirty Eng- 
lish companies in the Balkans. No sooner had we 
arrived than he handed me the keys of Alexandro- 
vats, as it were. Did I have an interpreter? 
Well, how the thunder did I get so far as this? 
But it made no difference now; I had met him, and 
he was absolutely at our service. All the officials 
of the town were his fast friends, and all the mer- 
chants, though he had been there only two weeks. 
As for languages, he could converse with me in 
English, French, German, Serbian, Bulgarian, 
Rumanian, and Italian. His knowledge of the 
country was at my disposal, and would I see the 
ladies settled, then come to dine with him? 

Even at this early date we were getting tired of 
tinned mutton and sweet biscuit, so the invitation 
to dine I accepted with alacrity, despite the fact 
that he spoke with an unmistakable Teutonic ac- 
cent. While I have nothing at all against this sort 
of accent, in a warring country where it is not par- 
ticularly popular, and when one has others to con- 



142 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

sider, it is just as well to steer clear even of the ap- 
pearances of evil. 

Mr. B was a wonderful interpreter. When 

I sat down to dine with him, before his German 
cook, JVIarie, a poor girl who had been caught in 
Serbia by the war, had set any dish before us, he 
apologized for the quality of his meal. He said 
that as Marie had not known there would be a 
"ghost" for dinner, she had made no extra prepara- 
tions. Had he known that a "ghost" was coming, 
he would have ordered her to prepare one of the 
six "kitchens" which he had been able to buy that 
afternoon, for by laborious search he had discovered 
six fat "hands." Seeing my dismay, he exclaimed 
testily : 

"Kitchens, kitchens, hands. How says it? 
Feathered files." Then as light broke over me, he 
ended triumphantly, ''Chez moi, Herr Yones, I am 
one good eater!" He was, indeed, the dinner cer- 
tainly being all that one could desire. 

To find in Alexandrovats at that time an excel- 
lent meal, faultlessly served in European fashion, 

was strange, but stranger still was Mr. B 's 

apartment. A man who had shown the business 
astuteness to amass a considerable fortune, as Mr. 
B undoubtedly had, and who has evacuated 



SPY FEVER 143 

Belgrade with nothing but a small hamper of 
clothes and a very good quantity of books, is un- 
usual. I found on his shelves, in wild Alexandro- 
vats, Heine, Schiller, Goethe, Shakespeare, Thack- 
eray, Dickens, Ibsen, Meredith, Browning, Samuel 
Butler, Shaw, Voltaire, Bergson, Maeterlinck, 
Maarten Maartens, the brilliant satire of the last 
named being sprinkled like paprika over my host's 
remarkable conversation. He seemed too good to 
be true, just the man to lead us out of Serbia. And 
it soon became obvious that he wanted to go. His 
story was simi)le. 

Twenty years ago he came with his wife from 
Bohemia to Belgrade. He had no money, but by 
hard work finally built up the firm of which he was 
the head. He had a son and a daughter, the son 
just attaining military age shortly before the war. 
Twice he had tried to become a Serbian citizen, but 
Serbia had with Austria a treaty by which a citizen 
of one could not without the consent of his country 
become a citizen of the other. This consent was 
refused because his son would soon be old enough 
to serve in the army. Just before the war began, 
the mother, son, and daughter paid a visit to Switz- 
erland, and were caught there by the beginning of 
hostilities. The offending treaty being abrogated, 



144 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

of course, as soon as the war started, Mr. B 

again tried for Serbian citizenship ; but another law 
was in the way. He could not become a Serbian 
citizen unless his wife was with him to give consent 
and to take the oath of allegiance at the same time. 
His wife was in Switzerland on an Austrian pass- 
port, and hence could not get into Serbia without 
making a journey full of risks and annoyances. 
His daughter had died, and the son was an engi- 
neer in Geneva. Mr. B had been interned 

since the beginning of the war, and was more than 
anxious to meet his family. He could not leave 
Serbia, yet he dared not be captured by his former 
countrymen because Austria is not particularly 
gentle with her citizens of Slav extraction who for- 
sake the country of their birth for the country of 
their preference. He saw in us his salvation. All 
the Serbian authorities knew him and had confi- 
dence in him. I must have an interpreter; he 
would be assigned to me, and happily we should 
go out together, only he would not leave Marie. 
Marie had come to them before the war and could 
not get back home. However, a week previously 
he had laid in large food supplies, so that they would 
not be an added tax on our very insufficient stores. 
I quickly decided to take him around to all the 



SPY FEVER 145 

military authorities, and, if they seemed to approve 
of him, to accept his services. 

Mr. B proved a great success in Alexandro- 

vats. EverjTi'here he was apparently respected, 
liked, almost bowed down to. I began to feel that 
my position in the place was assured w4th Mr. 

B as sponsor. For two days we hung about 

the narchelnik stanitza pleading for ox-carts and 
bread. This officer, chief of the station, is the go- 
between in Serbia for the civil and the mihtary. 
To him the ox-drivers go with all their grievances 
and to get their bread. To him all who have claims 
on the Government for ox-carts, shelter, and bread 
must go. All the relief workers come in contact 
with him. He is a ver\" kind, efficient jjerson, ready 
to do all in his power for a stranger within his gates. 
Of course one must have proper credentials, and be 
able to talk to him in some fashion. On the shoul- 
ders of these officers fell a large part of the labor 
and responsibility during the retreat. When they 
left at all, they were the last to go. Day by day 
they hstened to civilians and soldiers, sick and 
wounded, begging for bread and shelter, which they 
had not to give. They had to look out for the 
transportation of food into their stations and the 
proper distribution of it there. When a loaf of 



146 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

bread was selling at five dollars and could not be 
found at that price, they alone could give the little 
slip of paper that entitled one to his allowance. 
The scenes their waiting-rooms presented can be 
imagined. 

Famine was settling on Alexandrovats, and the 
Germans were close. There were no carts, no 
bread, and as the Government had long ago com- 
mandeered nearly all the oxen of the country, 
chances of buying any sort of transportation seemed 
slim, and all the more so as the whole population 
was beginning to move. Every hour I would bring 
to the nurses the crumbs of comfort the uarclicJuik 
let fall, and every hour we were disappointed. At 
last there came a time when he assured us that we 
must not wait any longer. We must find by pri- 
vate means any transportation we could and go at 

once. Now JMr. B became a fat httle jewel; 

he scintillated with usefulness. 

The chief lawyer of the place, a typical Serb of 
his class, trained in Germany and at his own uni- 
versity in Belgrade, calm in the face of the general 
confusion of the comnuuiity, already forming a 
league of the leading citizens to take all precau- 
tionary measin-es so that when the enemy came they 
should find a population that gave no excuse for 



SPY FEVER 147 

wholesale executions, was informed of my predica- 
ment. His whole fortune had disappeared, he 
could not but be concerned about his family, if any- 
thing happened in the communit}-, he by his promi- 
nence would be one of the first to suffer; yet he de- 
voted hours of his time to me. A stout, covered 
cart was found at a reasonable price, which I imme- 
diately paid. To secure horses was more difficult. 

We went to another of Mr. B 's fast friends, 

the chief baker, whose lowly position had at this 
moment brought him the pojjularity of a prince. 
lie was a huge man, with broad, hea\y features and 
small, black eyes that shifted their glance con- 
stantly. He had a pair of strong horses that he 
would sell me for the sake of the nurses. We went 
to his stable and found a good-looking pair of sor- 
rels for which he wanted a thousand dinars, an 
atrocious price for Serbia, but not in our predica- 
ment. The price was paid without much haggling, 
and as it was then late in the afternoon, we agreed 
to get an early start next morning, the last day that 
Alexandrovats would remain uncaptured. 

xVlthough our cart was large, it was not large 
enough to carr\' food for seven people for an in- 
definite period, their luggage, and still afford space 
for the women to ride. Food and blankets might 



148 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

mean life; we must carry all we i^ossibly could of 
them. So the order went round to cut down per- 
sonal luggage to the vanishing-pomt. Hard as 
this task must have been for them, the nurses merci- 
lessly trinmied doAvn their wardrobes without grum- 
bling. A third of our food-supply — tinned meat, 
condensed milk, biscuits, tea, and sugar — I felt I 
must leave at Alexandrovats for the Christitches 
in case they should come on. I confess it was a 
hard decision. The lack of this food might very 
well cost the lives of the nurses for whom I was re- 
sponsible. We were leaping into the dark. No 
one knew where or how long we would have to 
travel. Yet if INIme. and JNIlle. Christitch should 
come that way, depending on us for food, their po- 
sition would be perilous in the extreme. So a third 
of everything was left in charge of a man we knew 
we could trust, with instructions to hold it until the 
enemy was nearing the town, then to dispose of it 
as he saw fit. 

Early next morning Tichomir drove our cart to 

the home of INIr. B , where his things were 

taken on, and then they came down to us. Mr. 

B 's and Marie's belongings filled about two 

thirds of the cart. There were large wicker ham- 
pers, valises, and traveling-bags. I was astounded 



SPY FEVER 151 

that a man and his cook should feel the need of such 
an amount, and remarked to B that he evi- 
dently was not in the habit of traveling light. He 
looked confused, and with an ajiprehensive glance 
at Marie said he hoped we could get everything in. 
That cart looked like the popular conception of 
Santa Claus's sleigh, but we had the satisfaction of 
knowing that the load was not heavy, only bulky, 
and would dwindle day by day. 

Alexandrovats was in a furor. Fast retreating 
troops had struck the town an hour earlier, and 
were going through at breakneck speed. It seemed 
as if the sight of these worn soldiers persuaded 
many more families to go, for the departure now 
became an exodus. We set out in this melee along 
a road two feet deep with mud. The warm, 
bright sunshine, glorious autumn woods, and the 
sight of that top-heavy cart gave our "hearts and 
souls a stir-up," an exultation that was doomed to 
a quick death. About two miles out the road 
tackled a small mountain in a series of switchbacks, 
not steep, but almost interminable. 

We had pushed ahead, leaving the cart and 
driver to follow, and sat down on a grassy slope to 
wait for it. No cart came. The fleeing soldiers, 
thousands of them, passed and were gone. The 



152 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

refugee procession thinned. An hour went by, and 
still our ark did not appear. Then came a dove 
in the form of Tichomir, but bearing no olive- 
branch. With frenzied gesticulations he an- 
nounced something to JNIr. B , who turned to 

me groping for words : 

"They will not — they will not — will not — Gott 
im Himmel — they will not do, those horses I" His 
vocabulary did not include the highly significant 
adjective "balky," but certain experiences with 
Texas mustangs made me jump to this conclusion. 

Leaving the women on the hillside, we returned, 
and found a very meek pair of beasts as immovable 
as mountains, which, when the cart was unloaded, 
still refused to budge. The only thing to do with 
that kind of a horse is to get rid of him, but precious 
time was flying. Before sunset the enemy might 
be in Alexandrovats, and of all things I desired to 
avoid was having the nurses captured in such an 
isolated position. Unhitching the pair, we re- 
turned to the chief baker, and suddenly entering his 
shop, we surprised him counting a thousand dinars 
in ten and one hmidred dinar-notes. 

In a few well-chosen words I told Mr. B to 

tell him what I thought of his horses and of the sort 
of man who would play a trick like that. This did 



SPY FEVER 153 

not tend to soften his heart, however, and he flatly 
refused to return the money. Not to get that 
money back was unthinkable; without it we would 
not have enough to buy other means of transpor- 
tation, and with these horses we could not hope to 
get anywhere. With touching abandon I threat- 
ened and lied. I said I was a government repre- 
sentative, a personal friend of the President. I re- 
marked if the Germans came and found me there 
with three nurses, Mr. Gerard in Berlin would soon 
know the reason why. Anything done against me, 
I demonstrated, would be against my great and 
dangerous nation, and anything done to hinder the 
escape of three British citizens would have to be 
fully accounted for in after j^ears. I represented 
the deep guilt, the sordid avariciousness of his con- 
duct, and before I finished I had two thirds of the 
artillery of the world trained with dire threats on 
that shop; but the chief baker smiled calmly, bat- 
ting his small pig eyes. 

He was sustained by a secret spring of power. 
My predicament had fast spread through the little 
place, and the lawyer, the man with whom I had 
left the provisions, and some leading citizens were 
holding an indignation meeting about it around the 
corner. The interest these men took in us, laying 



154 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

aside their own anxieties, is one of the many things 
I cannot forget about the Serbs. But their hands 
were tied ; they dared not take an open stand against 
the chief baker. With the approach of the enemy 
he had become bold, and a truth long susj^ected was 
now virtually certain. He was in league with the 
enemy, and would become burgomaster of the place 
on occupation. Then he would hold more than the 
power of life and death over his fellow-townsmen. 
They stood in deadly fear of him, and so strongly 
suspected his affiliation with the invader that for 
fear of reprisals they dared not make way with him. 

So ]Mr. B and I had to fight our battle alone, 

and time was passing. JNIeanwhile the women were 
watching the sun swing westward on the pleasant 
hillside. 

A small Belgian automatic — from Liege — hung 
on my belt, less imposing than my mythical cannon, 

but more tangible. I indicated to Mr. B my 

intention of using this, as a bluff, of course, for law 
courts and ordered dealings had ceased to be in 

Alexandrovats. B agreed that as a last resort 

it might be necessary, and all the more so because 
by efforts of the lawyer four oxen had been found 
which could be bought for less than the two horses 
cost. We must have the money. One more fren- 



SPY FEVER 155 

zied appeal, and the baker softened a little; he 
would return all of our money except fifty dollars. 
This he must keep for his trouble. We closed on 
this finally, and soon had four strong oxen instead 
of the balky horses. 

I shall always wonder where those oxen were pro- 
cured. What the Government had overlooked, the 
refugees had taken. One would have been as likely 
to find South Sea Islanders on Broadway. But I 
can make a good guess. The man whose house we 
had occupied for three days and who, although 
poor, would not accept a cent in payment, had 
brought them from somewhere. I think they were 
some he had been saving against an emergency. 
They might mean much to him and his family later, 
yet they were sold to me at a price so low that after 
six weeks' constant travel I sold one pair of them 
for more than they cost me. Scarcely would he let 
me thank him. 

"Those Enghsh sisters," he said simply, "are 
angels. They came to us in our trouble and risked 
their lives to save our soldiers. All that any true 
Serbian has to give is theirs, and," he added earn- 
estly, "when you go back to your own country, you 
will not say, as the Suabas do, that we are bar- 
barians, will you, American brother?" 



156 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

The desire to be well thought of, to please, to be 
a part of Western culture, to do the thoroughly 
urbane thing, is one of the most striking charac- 
teristics of the Serb as he is to-day. One constantly 
meets examples. It strikes one as being the in- 
stinctive reaching out of a people that for centuries 
drew their very breath only at the pleasure of a 
terrible oppressor. 

In mid-afternoon we were once more on our way, 
our cart presenting no difficulty at all to the four 
fine oxen. For three days from that time we were 
happy, care-free vagabonds. The weather was 
beautiful, still days bright with sunlight and flaming 
woods, starry nights through which we slept like 
logs, lying in the open after the long marches. 
We saw comparatively few refugees on this road, 
for we were out of the main line of travel, and would 
not strike it until we reached the Ibar Valley, one 
day's journey before Rashka. Some of the most 
beautiful scenery of Serbia lies in the mountainous 
stretch between Alexandrovats and Rashka. On 
many crags stand old fortresses and castles dating 
from Roman times. 

One in particular I remember, Kozengrad, so 
old that its origin is purely legendary, and on so 
inaccessible a perch that it is named the "Goat 



SPY FEVER 157 

City," these being the only animals supposed 
to have been able to scale its mountain walls. 
For a long, hard day we tramped in and out 
among the hills, and never got away from it. We 
came to detest it as a personal insult. After 
that all-day march, it seemed as near as when we 
began. 

These days were one long picnic for us all except 
Marie. Her well-ordered Teutonic mind was 
blank with amazement at our mode of life. To 
sleep at night in one's clothes, to rise next morning 
and begin the march with not an hour to spare for 
one to arrange one's hair in a fearful and wonder- 
ful fashion, to eat with one's fingers and not have 
enough at that — these were the things that out- 
raged her housekeeping soul. It was indecent; 
she knew it, and would not be comforted. Also 
she could not in the least make out what it was all 
about, and I was unfortunate enough to be the em- 
bodiment of all the trouble to her. Before my 
advent there had been no tramping through the 
mire, no nasty food. Ferociously she pouted at 
me, and viciously answered all her master's efforts 
to cheer her up. She took a keen delight in tan- 
talizing him by walking, sure-footed enough, on 
the very brink of every precipice we passed, and 



158 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

when to divert her he would cry, ''Marie, Marie, 
glauhen Sie das ist schon?" 

"Acli Himmelf Schon sag en Sie? Haben Sie 
niclit immer Deutschland gesehen?" 

Mr. B told me of a little episode which well 

illustrates Marie's order of intellect. Before they 
had left Belgrade they were forced to leave their 
home hurriedly one day to take refuge in a neigh- 
boring cellar because big shells had begun to drop 
on their front lawn. JNIarie had forgotten some- 
thing and stole away to get it. She did not return 

and, after a time, INIr. B , much worried, went to 

look for her. He found her setting the house in 
order, the unavoidable confusion which their hasty 
departure had caused having left the place littered 
up. With shells bursting all around the house, 
INIarie refused to leave until she had swept the floors. 
Only when a fragment of shrapnel came hurtling 
through the dining-room window, missing her by a 
fraction, did she consent to go. 

But the tug-of-war between her and me came on 
the third day. The women were getting wearied, 
and also I was haunted by visions of their plight 
in case the fine weather should turn into a storm. 
There was not room in that covered cart for them, 
and time would not permit us to stop to seek shel- 



SPY FEVER 159 

ter. The thought of them tramping through mud 
in a cold, driving rain was too much to be endured. 
Some of those great, bulky baskets belonging to 

Mr. B must come out. We had stopped for 

the night at a tiny one-room cafe, for the sky was 
overcast and to sleep in the open seemed hazardous. 
After our meal, which was always the same, mutton 
and sweet biscuit, with coffee, tea, or cocoa, I put 
the situation up to the party. The nurses had al- 
ready discarded much; I was carrying very httle. 

Plainly it was up to Mr. B and Marie. 

Our soldiers brought in the baggage, and we all 
began unpacking except Marie. She opened the 
hampers, sat down, and gazed. I also gazed. Mr. 

B 's things occupied perhaps a sixth of those 

baskets, the rest being Marie's treasured accumula- 
tion of more prosperous, happier days. There were 
summer hats of straw and lace and pink paper roses, 
elaborate white dresses and green dresses and red 
dresses — dresses that had been ripped to pieces and 
dresses not yet made. There was a huge basket 
of mysteries I was not allowed to see, and six or 
seven pairs of flimsy summer slippers, some of them 
hopelessly worn. It was a regular garret, a rum- 
mage-sale. The whole could have been chucked 
into the river with less than fifty dollars' loss. It 



160 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

was a great relief to know that those baskets could 
be left behind with so little regret. 

"Tell her to pick out what she will need for a 
month, all the warm things, and throw the rest 
away," I said. 

"Ich mil mcht/' said ^Marie, with a very frank 
sort of smile, and continued to sit. 

"Tell her she must." 

^'Ich will nicht" 

"Tell her if she does not begin by the time I count 
twenty, I will do it for her. She cannot carry those 
things. We will pay her twenty times their value. 
Tell her we will buy her many new, pretty things, 
but now the women must have a place in the cart. 
Tell her this is only fair. She does not want to be 
selfish, I am sure. Tell her she is a good girl, and 
we all hke her and will get a lot of nice things for 
her." 

''Ich will nichtr with the same smile. 

"Tell her we will leave her here in this desolate 
place with these strange people for the soldiers to 
get if she does not." 

"Ich will nicht! Lassen micli." 

"Tell her we will throw away everything she 
has, tie her hands and feet, pitch her into the cart 
and take her by force." 



SPY FEVER 161 

"Gut! Ich will nicht/' 

Now, one can outdistance triumphant armies, one 
can after a fashion break refractory bakers to one's 
will, one can, if one is forced to, be happy in very 
extraordinary circumstances, but what can be done 
against an "Ich will nicht" like that? Nothing at 
all, and nothing was done. The rest of us discarded 
a little more, the things were repacked, and Marie's 
rummage-sale moved on to Rashka. 

Throughout these days v/e continually met de- 
tachments of soldiers, usually scouting parties of 
cavalry. The officers always recognized and 

greeted Mr. B warmly, increasing my feeling 

of good fortune in having found him. His constant 
talk during this time was of Serbia, and his intimate 
knowledge of the Balkan situation proved very illu- 
minating. He described the commercial warfare 
that for years previous to 1914 existed between Ser- 
bia and Austria in terms vivid enough to put the 
thing in the most real light possible. He had many 
stories to tell of strange affairs that happened from 
time to time between Belgrade and Vienna. Of 
nothing did he convince me more strongly than that 
he was heart and soul with Serbia. 

Our food was decreasing at an alarming rate de- 
spite our attempts to consume it with care. Also 



162 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

I began to regret that I had not been provided with 
papers giving me some official position, in order to 
get things from the Government. But with the aid 

of Mr. B I expected little difficulty, and at 

Rashka I felt sure of finding either an English mis- 
sion or Sir Ralph Paget, whose place it was to look 
after the British units. 

On the morning of the day we came into Rashka 
we met a group of the St. Claire Stobart Mission 
of Kragujevats. At the same time we came into 
contact with the main body of refugees, who were 
to be our constant companions until we came to the 
sea. This day a tragic thing occurred. We had 
passed the English unit before it had broken camp, 
and so were well ahead of it, but some of the mem- 
bers, pushing forward on foot, overtook us. I was 
sitting by the roadside chatting with two of them 
when a soldier rode up and spoke a lot of Serbian 
to us, from which we could only glean that the two 
women were wanted behind with their caravan. I 
continued mj'' way to catch up w^ith our cart, and on 
all sides I noticed intense excitement in the continu- 
ous stream of refugees. As I was unable to under- 
stand anything, I was at a loss to explain this. On 

reaching Mr. B , I learned that an English girl 

had been shot on the road behind us, and the news 



SPY FEVER 163 

stirred the refugee horde like wind across a grain- 
field. 

AVhile passing along a hillside, some officers had 
seen horses in a field above them. They needed 
horses badly, and decided to take these. When 
they started up the slope, however, they were 
warned by some peasants on the brow of the hill not 
to touch the animals. They paid no attention, but 
continued, and were met with a hail of bullets, which 
flew wildly over their heads and rained on the road 
below. As it happened, the English nurses were 
passing there, and as they ran for the shelter of 
tlieir carts a girl of nineteen was struck, the bullet 
passing through both her lungs. At such a time 
the accident was truly terrible, but as I heard it I 
could not imagine that it would detennine all my 
future course; yet it did. 

Early in the afternoon, as we neared Rashka, 
lying along the swift and muddy Ibar, a chill wind 
began to blow and rain came in torrents. It 
marked the end of our picnic, the beginning of a 
four weeks' experience as terrible as it was unique. 

The to^^^l was so crowded to ovei*flowing that I 
could find no place for the women to wait out of the 
rain while ISIr. B and I went to seek accommo- 
dations and bread. All four of them crowded into 



164 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

the cart on top of the biscuit-tins and huddled there 
while we went on our eventful quest. 

At Alexandrovats I had got papers for Mr. 

B , permitting hini to accompany me as far as 

Rashka, where, I was told, we would find the officer 
who was in supreme command of interned people. 
With this permission was a letter explaining my 
position and requesting that permission be granted 
to him to proceed with me through Montenegro, or 
wherever I might find it best to go. From his 

friend, the lawyer, Mr. B had also secured a 

letter to the military commandant of Rashka, 
couched in the strongest terms, asking that every- 
thing possible be done for us. Armed with these, 
I of course expected no difficulty, although I pos- 
sessed nothing but my passport in the way of offi- 
cial papers, nothing to prove that as a head of a 
unit I was entitled to receive bread and shelter. It 
is only fair to add that by the time we reached 
Rashka the situation of Serbia was more desperate 
than when we were at Alexandrovats, consequently 
the officials were on even a greater strain. 

However this may be, we did not get past the 
commandant's waiting-room. We were inquiring 
for him there when he walked in upon us, returning 
from his lunch. He was not a pleasant creature, 



SPY FEVER 165 

rather like a snapping-turtle, and began snarling 
at the orderlies before he caught sight of me. 
When at last he did notice me, I saw at once that I 
was not exactly i)crso7ia grata. Of course I was in 
tatters — the ox had seen to that — and had not been 
shaved or washed lately. Also we were both 
heavily incrusted with mud and soaked to the skin. 
Appearances count for a very great deal in times 
of military iide. I took off my cowboy hat and 
greeted him in French, which he soon made it evi- 
dent he neither relished nor understood. Then I 
indicated INIr. B , who handed the lawyer's let- 
ter to him. He scrutinized B fixedly for a 

full minute, made no offer to help, but remarked 
that we must return in four hours. Then he com- 
manded his orderly to show us out and slammed his 
door in my face. I was nonplussed. We had 
thought that the Red Cross and mention of the 
English women would prove everywhere an open 
sesame. Plainly those women should not have to 
paddle about in the rain for four hours, at which 
time it would be dark. 

We decided to try another officer, whose exact 
title I never learned. Our reception here was the 
same. At first he disclaimed any responsibility 
for looking after such as we were, and when he 



166 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

learned that Mr. B was interned, he abnost 

kicked us out of his place. Three English women, 
hungry and cold in the rain, seemed not to influence 
him in the slightest, but he plainly indicated his 
suspicions about Mr. B . 

As a last resort we went to the narchelnik, al- 
though we had no letters to him. The anteroom to 
his office was crammed, and when after an hour we 
finally got to him he said he could do nothing for us. 

He also eyed INIr. B suspiciously, and ordered 

us to go back to the officer from whom we had just 
come. 

As it happened, the Crown Prince, the General 
Staff, and the Government were then at Rashka, 
although most of the cabinet ministers had moved 

to Mitrovitze. Mr. B thought of an old friend 

who he said was rather highly placed in the Depart- 
ment of the Interior. Hither we took our bedrag- 
gled way, and there ^Ir. B 's presence precipi- 
tated e^ ents with the rapidity of a violent chemical 
reaction. 

The friend for whom we inquired was gone, but 
we were shown into an improvised office which pre- 
sented a scene of the wildest confusion. Imagine 
what it means to pick up a little thing like the De- 
partment of Interior of a nation and carry it about 







Serbians about to be shot as spies by the victorious Austriaus 




Rashka in the valley of the Ibar 



SPY FEVER 169 

on ox-carts. The archives lay on the floor a foot 
deep. Once orderly letter files were heaped about 
in crazy, topsyturvy fashion. Ink-bottles, empty, 
overturned, full, littered the desks, and three or four 
subordinate clerks encumbered the rare clear spaces. 
The department was in the act of executing its 
third move. We floundered through the paper 
snow to the desk where a frail man, dark and very 
pop-eyed, and with a tiny goatee, sat drumming 
languidly on an American typewriter of ancient 
model. 

We handed to this gentleman the letter having 

to do with the extension of INIr. B 's permission 

to accompany me. No sooner had he glanced at it, 
than he jumped up suddenly and crossed the room 

to his colleagues. From behind B 's back he 

began signaling to me in the most ridiculous man- 
ner. He placed a dirty forefinger on his lips, 
wagged his head from side to side, and winked his 
pop-eyes very fast. He reminded one of something 
hard and creepy, like a cockroach. The others con- 
versed in low tones a minute, then came over, and 

without any prelude went deftly through B 's 

pockets, pulling out all our various letters, which he 
was carrying. "These belong to you," Pop-eyes 
exclaimed to me in French. "Guard them as you 



170 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

would your life !" Seizing B by the shoulders, 

they marched him out of the room none too gently. 

Next they set to cross-examining me as to my 

whole acquaintance with B . It was growing 

dark and cold, and the rain still poured. I could 
not get my mind off the nurses, miserably huddled 
in the cart ; but neither the strength of my voice nor 
my French was equal to the task of interrupting 
the stream of interrogations fired at me. Hope- 
lessly was I submerged, until who should walk in 
but a young American Serb whom I had known 
previously. In a way he was known to the clerks, 
and, as I found out later, he entertained rather 
definitely correct ideas about them. He came to 
my rescue, and with him as interpreter I made more 
progress. 

They wished to know just what dealings I had 

had with Mr. B , and said I should never be 

allowed to see him again. It happened that Mr. 

B , because he had nothing but Serbian paper 

money, had paid for the cart and oxen, and I had 
promised to repay him at the current rate of ex- 
change in gold, for fortunately all my money was 
in gold. This transaction had never been com- 
pleted, and I now said I must see him for a moment 
only, as I had a little matter of slight importance 



SPY FEVER 171 

to settle. Wild excitement followed this simple 
statement, and I was asked for every detail of the 
affair. I then remarked that I owed him a little 
money for the cart and oxen. They brought him 
in, and I was astounded at the change in him. He 
was trembling, and appeared on the verge of a nei^- 
ous breakdown. As a matter of fact, he was in very 
real danger. 

I took out my purse and began counting the 
napoleons. When the clerks saw the gold, which 
of course at this time was much sought after by 
every one, they appeared surprised and jubilant. 
One of them went out, and returned before I had 
finished. He had a lot of Serbian notes in his 

hand, which he gave to B , pocketing the gold 

himself. "He is a suspect," he lucidly explained 
tome. 

After this transaction, I was able to convince 
them that three English nurses had really been out 
in the rain for hours, and that shelter must be found 
at once. They held a consultation among them- 
selves, which the American Serb later said he over- 
heard. Then one of them came with me, saying 
that he would find us a place to stay and that Mr. 

B might spend the night with us there. I did 

not quite understand this sudden leniency toward 



172 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

B , but was glad of it, because an interpreter 

was our greatest need, and I wanted to keep him as 
long as possible. The young clerk showed us every 
courtesy, first offering to give up his own quarters 
to us; but just as it grew dark, a large empty room 
was found where there was a stove. 

No sooner were we settled here than the clerk 
left us and the American Serb appeared. Mr. 

B was in a high state of excitement, but INIarie 

knew nothing of his agitation. The Serb called 

me aside, and asked if I felt kindly to ]Mr. B , 

or if I did not care what became of him. I replied 
that he had been kind and invaluable to us, and that 
I was distressed at his position. The Serb then 
said that he had good reason to believe that the 
clerks, relieved of the presence of their superiors, 

were planning to rob Mr. B , knowing him by 

reputation to be a wealthy man. I was at a loss to 
know what to do when I heard this. It was ob- 
viously in their power to do anything they wished at 
such a time, yet because of the nurses I could not 
afford to be miplicated in anything savoring of 
spies. 

I called ^Ir. B and told the Serb to tell him 

what he knew. INIr. B heard with no apparent 

surprise, but resigned himself at once. "They cer- 



SPY FEVER 173 

tainly can do anything with me. As a suspect, they 
will make me deposit all my money with them, and 
then they will go away, and I will have no redress 
because everything has gone to pieces. They can 
do with me what they like, and they will. You can 
do nothing for me personally, but you must take 
Marie. I give her into your hands ; you must take 
her along as one of your nurses. You can keep this 
for me," he added, handing me a package which he 
drew from his coat. He had known me less than a 
week, and the only tab he had on me was a New 
York address which I had written down for him be- 
cause I did not even have a card. He could give 
me no address for himself, but wrote down that of 
an uncle in Bohemia. The package contained 
twelve thousand five hundred dollars. 

Mr. B then turned away and passed down 

the dark street without saying a word. I confess 
that, sorry as I felt for him, the overpowering sense 
of having Marie on my hands took a larger place in 
my thought. I turned and went in where the 
nurses were setting out mutton and sweet biscuit. 
Those biscuit had grown sweeter and sweeter at 
every meal until now they were pure saccharine. 
Stepping out a little later I saw a figure lurking 
close by, and felt convinced that our place was being 



174 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

watched. Soon the Serb came to me again, saying 

that Mr. B had sent him to get Marie and some 

of their luggage. I told him of the guard, and they 
took precautions to get away unobserved. 

The department clerks were under the impression 

that B was still with me. Later the Serb came 

back alone and spent the night with us. He said 

Mr. B had met an old friend and was in hiding. 

Contrary to expectation, we were undisturbed dur- 
ing the night. 

In the morning there was no sign of our guard, 

and no one came to get B , as I had thought. I 

went down to the town, and was standing idly on a 
corner when a soldier passed by me and shoved a 
piece of paper into my hand. It was a diagram of 
the square where I was standing and of a street 
which led off to the west. It was fairly accurate, 
and a door some four blocks from where I stood was 
marked with a cross. After a short time, I found 
it — a low house surrounded by high walls, the only 
entrance to which was by a hea\y wooden gate that 
let one into a small garden, with the house on the 
left. In the garden, on a camp-stool, animatedly 
chatting with a group of French aviators, I found 
Mr. B . He glowed with joy at this new cos- 
mopolitan company which he had found; also he 



SPY FEVER 175 

had just received good news. He had found an 
old friend in the street the night before who had 
hidden him at his home, and early in the morning he 
had despatched a soldier to find me, not daring to 
show himself or even to write anything. Just be- 
fore I found him, the news had come that all the 
rest of the Government had been ordered to evac- 
uate in the middle of the night. Long before dawn 
Pop-eyes and his retinue had taken the rough road 
to Mitrovitze. Joyfully I returned all his cash 
and all claims to his cook. I could no longer have 
him. I do not know what became of him, but I 
hope he escaped capture. 



CHAPTER VI 

ALONG THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 

AFTER losing my interpreter, and with him 
the food which he had brought, I was faced 
with the necessity of doing something quickly. 
Food could not now be bought at any price. At 
least it was impossible for one not sj)eaking the 
language to find it. First I went back alone to 
the narchelnik. The crowd was larger, more pa- 
thetic, than on the preceding day. It was scarcely 
nine o'clock, yet hundreds of wounded soldiers 
had already dragged themselves there to beg for 
bread. 

As I fought my way in, pushing and crowding, 
a beast among beasts, I came face to face with a 
handsome young peasant woman coming out, led 
by two soldiers fully armed. She was crying bit- 
terly in a hopeless sort of way, great sobs shaking 
her whole body. In broken French a wounded man 
gave me her stor}\ She was a young widow with 
several children, her husband having been killed 
during the first invasion. Some starving soldiers 

176 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 177 

had passed her hut, and seeing that she had some 
corn-flour started to take it. With her children 
behind her, she had ordered them to leave. They 
came on, however, so seizing a rifle she had killed 
one of them, a petty officer. The military authori- 
ties had just had her under examination. 

When I came into an inner room, immediately 
adjoining the narchelnik's office, the crush was not 
so bad. Only my frenzied "Americanske mission" 
had obtained my entrance there. A few very badly 
wounded soldiers lounged about, and a small group 
of tired-looking officers stood conversing in one 
corner. At the opposite side of the room, sitting 
on the floor, with head and arms resting on a bench, 
was a ragged old man, a cheecha of the last line. 
He was at least sixty-five years old, and rested there 
motionless, without a sound, his body seeming inex- 
pressibly tired. No one paid the slightest heed to 
him. As I was looking at him four orderlies came 
in and picked him up. Only then did I realize that 
the old man was dead. As they turned him over, a 
terrible wound in his right breast came to view. 
It was plain, how, weak from hunger and loss of 
blood, he had dragged himself over the dreary 
mountains into the town and, with the last spark of 
energy left in him, had sought the source of all help, 



178 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

the narclielnik, only to die there in the lonely night. 

JNIy interview with the narcliclnik hroiight me 
nothing; neither interpreter, bread nor papers of 
any description. When I came out, it was with a 
deep feeling of discouragement. The tragedy of 
this retreat was becoming more and more manifest; 
the starving, the wounded, the dying, and dead in- 
creasing hourly. 

Only one thing was left. I must find the Eng- 
lish mission and turn over my nurses to them at 
once. I knew they were in the place, but I did not 
know where, and I could not ask. Walking across 
the principal square, trying to decide where to go, 
I met Colonel Phillips and the Italian military at- 
tache. Major de Sera, talking to one of the English 
nurses. The colonel was especially glad to find 
me, as IMajor de Sera, whom I had not met previ- 
ously, had just received a cable from his Govern- 
ment to inquire for news of ]\Ime. and INIlle. Christ- 
itch, the Serbian military attache at Rome, Captain 
Christitch, being a son of madame. I was able to 
give them what amounted to definite news of their 
capture, but nothing more. 

Colonel Phillips became at once interested in the 
plight of the three British nurses whom I had, and 
while I was explaining the situation to him Admiral 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 179 

Troubridge came up. I remarked that whereas 
we had got along very well so far, our food was go- 
ing fast, and, as they knew, I had no facilities for 
getting anything either from the Government or by 
private means. A chance remark of mine to the 
effect that I had not started out prepared for such 
emergencies brought this question from the Ad- 
miral: "What did you come out here for, anyway? 
Joy rides?" 

I replied that I was ready, as an American, to 
place myself entirely at the disposal of the British 
Government in aiding the retreat of the English 
nurses, but, as even he must see, the women were 
suffering from a state of affairs that it was impossi- 
ble for me to control. He seemed to understand 
the logic of this, and offered to walk across the town 
with me in order to introduce me to the head of the 
mission, which, he said, was being better looked after 
than any other because it was under the guidance of 
Dr. M. Curcin of the University of Belgrade, who 
had been appointed b}" the Government to look after 
affairs connected with the English units. 

We found the head of the mission, Dr. Elizabeth 
May of ^Manchester, and the Admiral explained the 
situation. Dr. May said she must speak to Dr. 
Curcin. Wlien she returned, she replied that Dr. 



180 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

Curein was unwilling to take on any one else, as a 
number of additions to the party had been made 
since the beginning of the retreat, and the food ques- 
tion was growing more difficult. However, they 
were leaving immediately, and I might travel with 
their hommorra, which consisted of aLout tliirty 
carts, thus avoiding isolation in case of capture. 
She said that she could not assume any responsi- 
bility for the nurse's as to food or shelter, but would 
"hand them over" to Sir Ralph Paget at INIitro- 
vitze, whose duty it was to look after them, she 
said. 

I was surprised at this, but at least it was some- 
tliing to go along with them, and we would have 
enough food to bring us to INIitrovitze, where things 
would be settled. I said we would be prepared to 
go at once. She told me to be punctual, as they 
could not wait ; but on returning to my cart, I found 
that Tichomir had had to go out into the covmtry for 
hay for the oxen, and would not be back for several 
hours. So we had to remain behind, and did not 
take the road until early next morning. We were 
again isolated, with the enemy close behind us, with- 
out ]Mr. B 's helpful tongue and with alarm- 
ingly short rations. Also the fear began to haunt 
me that winter would begin. I hated to think what 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 181 

tliis would mean to the women when we had no 
shelter. 

During the afternoon of the forced delay I 
scoured liashka for food, which I did not find. The 
refugee locusts had picked it clean. While on this 
search I was standing in front of a low, red build- 
ing that served as army headquarters. A row of 
automobiles was drawn up before it and at the door 
of one of the limousines stood a very important- 
looking man in a heavy fur coat. He was alto- 
gether a dignified looking person, the sort that made 
me feel my rags the more. Thus I was very much 
surprised when a natty young officer of perhaps 
twenty-five, spotless, shining like a tin soldier from 
his patent-leather gaiters to his gold pince-nez, 
strode down the steps and, coming up })ehind him of 
the fur coat, thumped him resoundingly on the back, 
crying in Serbian "Good day." It looked like lese- 
majesty to me; but I had the thing twisted: the 
thumper, and not the thumped, was Alexander 
Karageorgovich, Crown Prince of Serbia. He 
seemed like a young American lawyer, clean-cut, 
with suppressed energy in every movement as he 
walked down the street, followed at some ten paces 
by a single Serbian major. His inheritance was 
dwindling to the vanishing point, scarcely one third 



182 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

of the fine army of which he was commander-in- 
chief remained, and in all probability he was about 
as hungry as the rest of us, but one would have 
thought from his face that he was going to dress 
parade. 

The Serb has an astonishing ability to suppress 
all traces of feeling when he so wishes. I have 
never yet seen one admit that misfortune had got 
the better of him. The officers we had met at Stal- 
ach talked with humor and brilliancy, when every- 
thing in the world they cared for had gone to de- 
struction. With seeming light-heartedness, the 
crown prince took his afternoon walk while his 
kingdom crumbled. I remember later meeting in 
Montenegro an officer I had known in happier 
days. He had passed through butchery as bad 
as anything on any war front, he had seen his 
regiment almost wiped out, his country devastated, 
his private fortune and his home destroyed, his 
family in peril, and had himself frozen and starved 
for six weeks, he who until 1912 had never known 
a day's hardship. After greeting me warmly 
and happily, his first act was to give a very 
funny pantomime of how necessity had taught him 
to conceal the very significant fact that he had to 
scratch. Lack of feeling? A few minutes later I 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 183 

caught him off his guard, and a clearer expression 
of abject misery I hope I may never see. 

The valley of the Ibar is one of the wildest and 
most beautiful in the world, but in that three days' 
march we came to regard it as monotonous beyond 
endurance. Twenty or thirty miles of it out of 
Rashka surpasses the far-famed Gorges des Loups. 
The road that twists along the tortuous, shelving 
cliffs that form its banks is as marvelous as the 
Route des Alps and as beautiful as any Corniche 
road must be. Also it is just about as bad as a 
road could be and still remain a road. Rashka lies 
in a narrow plain at a widened part of the valley. 
The road leads out along this plain for a little way, 
then follows the rapidly rising banks, first on their 
crest, and later, when they tower to extraordinary 
heights, is cut from the living rock midway up their 
sides. With the rising of the banks the valley nar- 
rows to a gorge, so that it is like a great funnel, in 
the wide-spread mouth of which lies Rashka. Con- 
verging at this place, the refugee throngs from most 
of northern Serbia flowed through this gigantic 
funnel. The surface of the way was trampled out 
of all semblance to a road. The unbuttressed outer 
edge crumbled away under the tearing pressure of 
heavy army-lorries and the innumerable ox-carts 



184 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

that passed over it. The narrow foot-paths along 
the sides and on the slopes above became serpentine 
rills of slush incessantly beaten by crowds of men, 
women, and children marching from horrors behind 
to horrors ahead. For the most part these throngs 
were forced to go in single file over the narrow 
trails, which strung their numbers out into an in- 
terminable silhouette against the hills that seemed to 
be tirelessly moving in some great, blind pageant 
of suffering. 

We became a part of the moving hosts, and soon 
were winding along the high cliffs half way between 
the beautiful river, five hundred feet below, and the 
jagged pinnacles above. A November sun flooded 
all the valley with bright sunshine, picking out the 
figures of refugees and carts far ahead and behind. 
When I found a suitable place, I scaled a rocky 
point at a curve in the valley, which rose more than 
a thousand feet, above the river, and from it, where 
there was scarcely room to keep a footing, got a 
photograph of three or four miles of the refugee 
train as it wound along. 

In the afternoon a motor ambulance passed us, 
in which were some nurses of the Scotch mission. 
Motoring on that crumbling road was not an un- 
alloyed pleasure, and we were not surprised to find, 




(c) Underwooa & Uuderwooa ^ 

Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia 







^. J» 








(c) undenvood & Underwood iK.,,. v-illev 

After the blizzard in the Ibai valley 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 187 

farther on, this same ambulance at the foot of a 
steep slope, smashed to pieces. Loaded full of 
British women, it had tumbled down the hill when 
the road caved from under it. One of the nurses 
was killed instantly, and others were severely 
bruised. 

Late in the afternoon we heard an army-lorry 
snorting behind us. It was taking the inside of the 
road, and the road here consisted mainly of inside. 
Carts were pushed to the crumbling brink, and, just 
ahead of us, one which had not quite cleared the 
path of the heavy car was bowled over the side with 
its team of horses. The people in it flew out like 
peas from a pod, but miraculously escaped serious 
injury. The horses fell on the top of the cart, 
which had lodged against some small trees about 
half way down to the river. They were on their 
backs, entangled in the wheels, and were kicking 
each other viciously. With his usual presence of 
mind, Tichomir seized our only ax, and, leaping 
down, set to hacking away indiscriminately at trees, 
wheels, cart, and horses. Soon the whole thing 
rolled on down into the river, and our ax with it. 

We continued the journey, tracking until almost 
nightfall, because there was literally no room to 
sit down along the road. At last we descended to 



188 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

the level river bank and sought a resting place. 
There was a chill wind, and the only wood for fires 
was the great sycamores growing along the river. 
A large straw stack looked inviting to us, but on its 
further side we found numerous families already en- 
sconced, who shooed us away vehemently. Next I 
tried to get into a small militarj^ camp where big 
fires were burning, but with no success. Our pride 
now being injured, we decided to "go it alone." 

A fire was the first of all necessities, and I sent 
Tichomir to beg, borrow, or steal an ax. He did 
none of them. There were dozens of camps about 
with axes, but none could be borrowed, he said. 
Meantime I had been raking twigs together and 
breaking off small green branches with my hands. 
It was not easy, but necessary, and I ordered him to 
help. He was tired and out of humor and refused. 
With what joy would I have pitched him into the 
river, but I needed him too much. He plainly indi- 
cated that he considered the whole affair useless. 
What we could gather with our hands would be 
gone within an hour, and then we would be colder 
than ever; we might as well freeze at once. With 
sarcastic waggings and wavings, I conveyed to 
him what I thought about his losing our ax. "Nay 
dobra, nay dohra" ( "no good, no good' ' ) . I danced 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 189 

up and down and shouted at him over and over, 
while the nurses huddled together about the tiny 
blaze we had kindled and ate their mutton and sweet 
biscuits. 

Tichomir's imperial eyes flashed and, with only 
a calm shrug or two, he said quite unmistakably, 
if I thought it possible to get wood, why did n't I 
go and do it? So off I went, thinking to find a 
drift down the river. I passed a camp where I saw 
great piles of neatly split logs, all ready to keep a 
fire going the whole night. It was evidently the 
camp of some high civil dignitary. Through the 
walls of a neat, little tent warm light glowed, and I 
could hear the murmur of conversation within. By 
the side of the tent a man was busily engaged in 
cooking supper. Three delightfully savage raga- 
muffins were at work making things as comforta- 
ble as possible. At a glance one could see they were 
rascals. I passed close to one of them, and rattled 
some money in my pocket. He looked up as if it 
were a sound he had not heard lately. ''Piet din- 
ars'' ("Five dinars"), I whispered, pointing to the 
pile of wood, and then to a spot of deep shadow 
some fifty yards distant. With a pained expres- 
sion he made signs toward the tent, conveying the 
illustrious ownership of that wood, and making 



190 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

plain the fact that he was an honest man. ''Decit 
dinars'' ("Ten dinars"), I bid up, and in twenty 
minutes we were roasting our toes at a fine fire with 
enough spHt logs in sight to keep it going until 
morning. Tichomir was perplexed. However 
bad humored I might have been, he had hitherto 
regarded his American hraat as strictly honest. 

Along this march we began to see increasing in- 
stances of starvation. In places where the road was 
particularly bad Austrian prisoners were always 
found tending it. Seeing the cross on my arm, 
these men would come to me begging medicines, 
for many of them were suffering from malarial 
fever. "Can't you give us bread? Can't you give 
us quinine?" they begged. To be unable to supply 
these simple wants was very sad. There were few 
soldiers guarding these prisoners; indeed, fre- 
quently they were virtually alone, but starving as 
they were, they remained peaceable and calm. 
They obeyed orders willingly and, it seemed to me, 
regretted the suffering among the Serbs as much as 
their own hardships. Their guards suffered just 
as their prisoners did. A^Hien there was any bread, 
it was share and share alike. 

Coming across a particularly wretched group of 
these prisoners in one of the most desolate parts of 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 191 

our way, I saw a tall Austrian weakly leaning 
against a rock and weeping in an insane manner. 
He sobbed and blubbered, and bit his lips until the 
blood ran. He was mad from hunger, dying by 
inches, and not alone, but while thousands of people 
passed him, and three hundred of his comrades 
there, faced the same fate. A gray-haired man 
came by, apparently a Serb who had seen better 
days, but who was now walking the muddy road 
with a pack on his back. Seeing the prisoner, he 
stopped and asked a guard what was the matter. 
"No bread," was the brief answer. The Serb 
reached into his pocket and took out a large hunk 
of white bread, the first I had seen in a long time, 
for bread of that sort was not to be had at any price. 
The starving man seized it, turned it over and over 
in his hands, and then devoured it in an incredibly 
short time. For a brief moment a sort of ecstasy 
came into his eyes, and then he grew violently ill. 
He vomited up the precious food and fell to sobbing 
once more. 

Frequently, after bread and flour gave out, the 
prisoners would procure an ear or two of Indian 
corn. They never knew where they would get any 
more, and as this was all that lay between them and 
starvation, they hoarded the grains as a miser would 



192 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

so many diamonds. By repeated counting they 
knew the number of rows and grains on a cob, and 
would allow just so many rows for a meal. They 
either parched the gi'ain in hot ashes or boiled it in 
old tin cans, and sometimes, when they found a dead 
animal, they made soup. 

Searching about for wood when we made camp 
that night, I came across a slightly wounded soldier 
lying inert among the bushes. It was chilly, the 
ground was wet, and he was in rags; but when I 
stumbled over him he did not move. I turned him 
over and looked at his face. He was a mere boy, 
not more than twenty. He was dazed, and when he 
did become aware that some one was near him, he 
mumbled over and over in Serbian: "Is there any 
bread? Is there any bread?" I dragged him to 
our fire, got some mutton and biscuit, and placed 
them in his hands. 

For fully five minutes he looked at the food, turn- 
ing it about, bewildered. Then he dropped it on 
the ground, and took out of his pocket a cob from 
which he had gnawed nearly all the corn. Count- 
ing a dozen grains, he bit them off, carefully re- 
placed the cob, and lay down in the mud. It was 
with the greatest difficulty that we awakened him 
out of his lethargy to the extent that he realized we 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 193 

had real food for him. Next morning we had to 
leave him by our smoldering fire with the scanty 
food I felt justified in taking from the stores. Con- 
tinually during these dreary weeks we had thus 
to make compromises with our better feelings. To 
leave a man like that in the wilderness was simply 
murder, but there were the women of our party to 
be thought of. And why choose him for life when 
hundreds and thousands of his fellows were in a 
like predicament ? The only respite from such try- 
ing decisions came when they had grown so common 
that no one felt them any more. 

In watching Serbia die, we came to attain what 
Nietzsche terms "metaphysical comfort," and the 
heroism of the Serbs supplied the exaltation of a 
Greek tragedy, showing as nothing else could the 
strange, paradoxical pathos and yet utter insignifi- 
cance of individual lives. When heroes die by tens 
of thousands, each is none the less a hero, but how 
inconsequential each ! 

To get into Mitrovitze is like chasing a mirage. 
About eleven in the morning we came to it. It was 
perhaps three miles away, but the swift, treacherous 
current of the Ibar lay between, and there was no 
bridge. So for four hours we followed the river as 
it wound about the city in a series of broad curves, 



194 WITH SERBIxV INTO EXILE 

until on the opposite side from which we ap- 
proached we found a long bridge spanning it. On 
the hilltop, just before we descended to this bridge, 
we passed a brand-new cemetery by the roadside. 
It had the unmistakable, extemporaneous air which 
the swift ravage of typhus last year gave to many 
Serbian burying grounds. There w'cre perhaps 
fifty graves, none of them more than a week old. 
Typhus was beginning in ^litrovitze, and two vic- 
tims were being buried as we passed. 

On crossing the bridge I found it impossible to 
ffet our cart into the town itself because of the reiu- 
gees, and left it outside among the innumerable 
Jwmmorras then encamped there. With Tichomir 
as the best excuse for an interpreter I could get, 
I went into the town to find Sir Ralph Paget, who 
I knew was there, as well as many English nurses. 
It w^as about three-thirty in the afternoon, and I 
was anxious that the very tired women should have 
some shelter that night, because for three nights 
they had had none. I thought to hand them over, 
with the remainder, thank Heaven! of the mutton 
and biscuits, to Sir Ralj^h, and then decide what I 
should do. Alone I could travel fast, and the re- 
treat, despite its terror, was intensely interesting. 
I should have to trust to luck about finding food. 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 195 

My alternative was to stay in Mitrovitze until the 
Germans came, and then return home through Aus- 
tria and Switzerland. 

By this time my personal appearance was truly 
awful, and the gendarme at the other end of the 
bridge kept me almost half an hour before Tichomir 
could persuade him to let me go on. He would 
never have dreamed of stopping me if I had worn a 
smart uniform. What inquiries we could make 
among the anxious crowd brought us no informa- 
tion. No one seemed ever to have heard of Sir 
Ralph Paget, but somebody said they thought there 
was an English mission in the casern by the hospital. 
As corroborating this, I suddenly sighted an Eng- 
lish nurse standing on a corner watching the crowd. 
She informed me how to reach the casern, and told 
me a special train at that moment was leaving 
Mitrovitze with a hundred and twenty nurses who 
intended to reach England as soon as possible. 
Their train journey would be only three hours, when 
they would again have to take ox-carts and start for 
the mountains. But there were many more nurses 
left in Mitrovitze, for, even as late as this, some still 
hoped to be able to remain and work. These would 
stay as long as possible. To have arrived a few 
hours earlier would have enabled my three nurses to 



196 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

join this hundred and twenty. To come in one end 
of the town as they were going out the other, did not 
tend to put one in an enviable humor. 

After a few minutes I found Dr. May at the 
casern. She could give me only general directions 
where to find Sir Ralph, but offered me a room for 
the nurses, having secured more shelter than her 
party needed. Grateful for this aid, I set off to 
find Sir Ralpli, and met his secretary, Mr. Leslie, in 
the street. I put the situation of the three nurses 
before him in detail, with the assurance that, as 
previously, I was ready to do all in my power to aid 
the British women in any manner. I asked him to 
bring the matter to Sir Ralph's attention as soon as 
possible, for it was then late, and I could not go in 
person, but had to return to my party outside the 
town to bring them to the quarters Dr. May had 
kindlj'- loaned me. Mr. Leslie said he would tell Sir 
Ralph at once, so that I felt the nurses' safety was 
assured, at least to the extent of the other British 
women in the place. While we were talking, Cap- 
tain Petronijevich came up, and the comic side of 
my predicament seemed to strike him forcibly. 
We laughed together, and I went away feeling 
greatly relieved. 

All of our party were dead tired and could not be 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 197 

thankful enough for a roof that night, as it rained 
heavily. Despite a warning I had received that 
the people in the house could not be trusted, I slept 
soundly on the floor in the hall of a Turkish house 
where we were. Relieved of the necessity of get- 
ting under way next morning, we all slept late, and 
it was nearly nine o'clock when I went out from the 
secluded court where our house stood, through two 
outer courts, to the street. 

One of the liveliest scrimmages I have ever seen 
was in session. There was a terrific jam, automo- 
biles, ox-carts, and carriages grinding mercilessly 
into one another, and the town could not be seen for 
the people. Acquaintances were shouting excit- 
edly to one another across the street, and children 
were howling. The gate through which I came 
opened on a large square where nearly all the streets 
of the town emptied, and from which the road to 
Prishtina ran. The trouble was that everybody 
was trying to take this road at the same time, and no 
one was succeeding very well. 

In the center of the square I suddenly spied 
English khaki, and recognized Admiral Troubridge 
and Colonel Phillips. They were seated in an 
ancient fiacre, and wasting a good deal of energy 
trying to impress on a nondescript coachman the 



198 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

necessity of speedily getting free from the tangle. 
The Admiral caught sight of me, and beckoned me 
to him. 

"Where are the three nurses? You will have to 
get out before noon," he said all in a breath. 

"I have reported them to Sir Ralph; he has made 
arrangements for them, I presume. What is the 
matter, anyway?" 

■'The Serbs seem to have had an awful knock. 
Word came after midnight to evacuate this town at 
once. The road to Prizrend may already be cut; 
if so, think of Ipek. Remember what I say : think 
of Ipek as a refuge. And if you want to see Sir 
Ralph, you had better hurry to his house ; but he has 
already gone, I think. Good-by, good luck, and 
remember Ipek," he shouted at me as the fiacre 
plunged through an opening in the crowd. 

I hurried down the street, dimly recollecting some 
directions, crossed a bridge, and, turning to the left 
along the river bank, saw Sir Ralph just getting 
into his touring-car, which was piled high with lug- 
gage of various descriptions. He saw me coming, 
and ceased arranging his baggage. 

"Good morning, Mr. Jones. I began to think I 
should go away without seeing you. Mr. Leslie 
told me about the three nurses. I am extremely 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 199 

sorry that I can do nothing to help you. I hope 
you understand how it is." 

"But, Sir Ralph, you know the circumstances 
under which I have these English nurses? Having 
no official standing and no interpreter, I am unable 
to get anything for them. Also, I feel that the re- 
sponsibility is growing too great." 

"I am very sorry, but I can do nothing. The 
General Staff has been ordered to go, and I must 
go with them. After they go I am powerless. I 
should advise you to go on to Prizrend, where there 
are sure to be parties forming to go over the moun- 
tains. Really I am most awfully sorry." 

"Had I not better turn them over to Dr. May? 
My oxen are getting weak, and our food is almost 
gone. I am sure that unaided I can never get the 
nurses to Prizrend." 

With the sort of accent that American actors 
strive a lifetime to attain, looking back at me as the 
chauffeur started the car, "Yes," he said, "that is 
best, if you can persuade Dr. May to take them." 

"Good morning, Sir Ralph." 

"Good morning, Mr. Jones." I turned on my 
heel and walked away. At least I had expected 
a brief note recommending that Dr. May look out 
for these English women, who were in a very dan- 



200 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

gerous situation. I had gone only a little way when 
I heard running steps behind me, and Mr. Leslie 
rushed up shoving three books into my hand. One 
of them was in a postal wrapper, the other two were 
uncovered. 

"Sir Ralph wishes to know if you will be kind 
enough to deliver this book to its owner, if you hap- 
pen to find her, and the other two he thought you 
might like to read in your spare moments." 

Saying this, he fled to catch the moving motor. 

I stood gazing stupidly down at the books in my 
hand, and finally became aware of two words star- 
ing blackly at me from a yellow cover. "Quo 
Vadis?" they impishly screamed at me, "Where are 
you going?" "Quo vadis, quo vadis?" And I 
could not answer at all. Subtle humor to meet in 
an Englishman! 

Having told my nurses the night before that 
everything was sure to be all right now, I had no 
heart to go back to them with these fresh complica- 
tions. Instead, I wandered up the street a short 
way to think, though the crowds that swept me 
along left little time for mental gymnastics. 

It is a Turkish custom for women to mix bread at 
home ; then they take it in large shallow pans to the 
public bake-shops, where it is baked for a small con- 



THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 201 

sideration. The good Turkish housewives were 
now engaged in this daily pilgrimage along the 
streets of Mitrovitze. As every one was ravenously 
hungry, they were the cynosure of all eyes as they 
marched gracefully along, the wide, round pans ex- 
pertly balanced on their heads. Going forward in 
a "brown study," I quite unpremeditatedly collided 
with the fattest and ugliest of these bread women 
and both of us were showered with the sticky, yel- 
low maize batter. It ran down the good woman's 
face like broken eggs, and down my back in nasty 
rivulets. Immediately there was a throng, with 
shouts and excitement, while the old woman seized 
the copper pan and started for me. A wall of grin- 
ning soldiers cut off all retreat ; so ignominiously I 
bought forgiveness and liberty with ten francs. 

This collision brought me to my senses, as it were, 
and I decided to try another appeal on Dr. May. 
It was about ten o'clock when I arrived at the 
casern and found my way to the huge room the 
party of forty had occupied. They did not seem 
alarmed by the general exodus, and were only then 
eating breakfast. 

I found Dr. May seated before a bowl of por- 
ridge, w^hich she generously wanted to share with 
me, but I had no appetite. She, of course, wished 



202 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

to know what Sir Ralph had done with the nurses. 
I told her about the brief interview, repeated my 
predicament, and asked if she did not see her way 
clear to taking on the three nurses. She replied 
that she sympathized with me deej^lj^ but that Dr. 
Curcin had refused to take on any more, and she 
did not think she could do it. I then remarked that 
I had done all in my power for the three English 
women, and if their own countrywomen would not 
make the very small sacrifice that receiving them 
into their own unit would require, now that my 
power had ended, I did not know what would be- 
come of them. Again she expressed her sympathy 
for their position and regretted exceedingly not to 
be able to take them. However, she made the same 
offer as at Rashka, namely, that our cart might come 
along with theirs, and whereas food and shelter 
could not be provided, in case of capture the women 
would have the advantage of being with them. 
This was the final arrangement, and Dr. Curcin 
agreed that when it was possible to get bread from 
the Government he would ask for an allowance for 
us. In the middle of that same afternoon, the six- 
teenth of November, we all left Mitrovitze together, 
taking the road over the Plain of Kossovo. 



(■ '' 










,^. ^' 



fe 




/r 




CHAPTER VII 

ON THE "field OF BLACKBIKDs" 

TO American readers the name Kossovo doubt- 
less calls forth little recognition. But to 
every Serbian, Kossovo brings uj) an image of 
past glory when the present dream of every Ser- 
bian heart was a reality. A powerful Slav nation 
existed until more than five hundred years ago, 
when the Turks won a crushing victory on the 
Plain of Kossovo, and the ancient kingdom, whose 
power stretched from Mitrovitze to Prizrend, be- 
came a memory. 

The great battle that took place here resulted in 
such slaughter that for generations it became the 
synonym for all that was terrible. Because of the 
great flocks of vultures that were said to have gath- 
ered over the plain after the battle, it has always 
been known as the "Field of Blackbirds." 

To me the name of Kossovo calls up one of the 
most terrible spectacles I shall ever see. The plain 
on the day after we left Mitrovitze epitomized all 
that is sordid, overwhelming, heartrending, and in- 

205 



206 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

termingled in that strange maze, which is ever the 
wonder of onlookers at the tragic puzzle of war, all 
that is noble, beautiful, sublune. Until that day 
I did not know the burden of the tiny little word 
"war," but never again shall we who traversed the 
"Field of Blackbirds" think of war without living 
again the snow-filled horrors of our march. 

From Mitrovitze to Prishtina is scarcely more 
than twenty-five kilometers. I am sure that never 
before in human history has more suffering, hero- 
ism, and patriotism been crowded into so small a 
space. As usual, we were with the aiTny, or, what 
the day before had been an army. I think from the 
Plain of Kossovo what had been the most stoical 
fighting body in a war of valiant armies became for 
the time being no more an army, no more the expres- 
sion of all the hope and valor of a nation, but a 
ghost, a thing without direction, a freezing, starv- 
ing, hunted remnant that at Belgrade, Semendria, 
Bagardan, Chachak, Babuna Pass, Zajechar, and 
many other places had cast its desperate die and 
lost, and needed only the winter that leaped in an 
hour upon it on the "Field of Blackbirds" to finish 
its humiliation. For it was on the dreary stretches 
of Kossovo that the cold first came upon us. In an 
hour a delightful Indian-summer climate changed 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 207 

to a temperature so savage that of all the dangers it 
was the greatest. 

Forty English women made the march that day. 
They made it without food and without drink ; most 
of them made it on foot and in clothing intended 
only for Balkan summer. I think it can be said 
that the party of Enghsh women stood it better 
than the Serbian refugees and fully as well as the 
Serbian army. Of course girls who entered the 
march mere girls came out in the evening old in ex- 
perience. They saw the things that generations of 
their sisters at home live and die without the slight- 
est knowledge of — the madness of starvation, the 
passion to live at all cost, the swift decay of all civ- 
ilized characteristics in freezing, starving men. 
They understand now better than any biologist, any 
economist, could have taught them the struggle for 
existence and the survival of the fittest. At the end 
they smiled, made tea, slept forty in a Turkish 
harem, and next day marched their thirty kilome- 
ters. They are the heroines of the Serbian tragedy, 
and they realized it not at all. 

When we left Mitrovitze at two-thirty in the aft- 
ernoon, we were in the center of that ever-surging 
refugee-wave along the crest of which we sometimes 
moved, but behind which never. Just out of INIitro- 



208 Wnil SKKIUA I \ lO I'.XILK 

vit/o [\\c vo:\(\ (.'limbs in stcrj> ascents t>vtM- n suwill 
ranLic ol' hills, tlun dips to [he \c\c\ oi' the plain. 
Thorc arc no tiocs c>n Kossovi\ a lictail; but have 
ymi cvor si\ n an army in /wo wcaihcv l;o inti> (.'am[) 
"vvithiHit >vooil/ The plain continues ;Unu^sl to 
Vrishtina, where the vond bei^ins to climb cu\ce more 
in snake-like ziov.ai^'s. every curve ot' it a boo", until 
t'rom the top ot' a ranm^ Trishtina is visible, lyini;' iu 
a snu^' cove amouL^" the miumtains, 

A\'e had scarcely desccnilcil to the plain outside 
of Mitrovil/e when the early dusk came on. and we 
turned aside ti> caniji in a ciirn-ticlil. haviuL^" c'lMUO 
about six kilometers in two hours anil a half. 'There 
was a warm breeze t'ri>m the smith, anil the clear sky 
lookeil like midsummer. 

Our little ]iarty camped near by, but separately 
t'rom the main kommorra. As we were once nu>re 
partaking" oi' unit ton and sweet biscuit, about a 
brightly bla/.ini;- camp-tire. Dr. May came over to 
see us. She said she had a "'bari^ain to drive" with 
me, and I saiil, "All right." She tt^ld us the 
nurse who had been shot on the road to Hashka had 
had to be left at Mitrovitze with two women doctors 
and a nurse. Mitrcwit/.e was expected to tall any 
day, but she desired to send back the one niotor- 
ainbulance they possessed to see if the sister could 



OS 'jjfK \ WAA) ()\ Ju.Ar:KiiJiajS' 200 

\)<; rnovf;fJ. 'V\^^: voun^ iiriti-sh chmiifcjir sho hesi- 
tated to scfid f^ack to almost sure caf^turc, but J was 
neutral. Jf J would t.ak'; Ih'; arnbuJancx: when it 
caught up with us next day and return with it to 
Mitrovit/e, there to p]a'f:e i(\\'vM' at the ahs^jJutc 
disposal r;f' the d^xjtors, cM\i<:r to bring tfie wounded 
girl on or to stay with thern and he captured or go 
anywhere they might, send rne, she agreed to take 
the tijree rjurses as her own and Sf;e them through 
with the rest of her party. J replied that J was 
ready to dfj this, and she took on tfje nurses at once. 
'J'he an]f^ulanee did not reaeh us until I^rishtina, 
however, ho J made all of the uiarvh next day and 
returned from Frishtina to Mitrovit//-, hut more of 
that later. At last J had secured the safest pos- 
sible provision for the nurses. From this "bar- 
gain" on, J eannot say too much for the kindness 
arjd consideration shown me in every way \ry the 
English women. Later when J fell ill during a 
hitter cold spell, J feel that J owed my life to the 
attention which some of them found time to give 
me despite their own hardship and sufferings. 
Nor can I exaggerate the thoughtfulness and un- 
selfishness of both Dr. May and Dr. Curcin in 
looking after the comfort and security of the mi.s- 
sion in every possible particular. 



210 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

On the stretch of road we had traversed that 
afternoon I counted fifteen army-motor lorries 
hopelessly bogged in the mud. The mire was well 
above the hubs of our ox-carts, and it was all the 
powerful beasts could do to pull the carts along. 
Before, as far as one could see, was a squirming, 
noisy, impatient stream of carts, automobiles, and 
carriages, while behind us from the thousands of 
camps spread about JNIitrovitze an unbroken tor- 
rent of vehicles flowed out on the road. I esti- 
mated that without an instant's pause day and 
night, at the rate oxen could go, it would require 
at least three days for the ox-carts about Mitro- 
vitze so much as to get on the road. Indeed, many 
hundreds were taken there by the Germans five 
days later. 

There were crowds of Austrian prisoners at work 
along this part of the road, their best efforts only 
being sufficient to prevent the way from becoming 
absolutely impassable. Here I saw my first and 
only German prisoner. For some reason he was 
not working with the others, but stood on the road- 
side looking down on them. The Austrian prison- 
ers were in tatters. For weeks they had not had 
sufficient to eat. The German presented a strik- 
ing contrast. Superbly equipped, helmet shining, 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 211 

his wonderful gray-green uniform successfully 
withstanding the hardest usage, a comfortable 
gi'eat coat over his shoulders, well shod, and exhib- 
iting every indication of being well fed, I concluded 
he had not been captured very long. He was lo- 
quacious enough, and while we listened to the Ger- 
man guns then booming not very far from Mitro- 
vitze he naively asked: "But why is every one 
going in a hurr^^ ? What does it mean ?" If it was 
irony, it was well veiled, and I turned the subject 
to Frankfort, his home, and found him an enthusi- 
astic reader of Goethe. He was a fine soldier, but 
I do not forget what the cheechas of Chachak did 
to his kind. 

Plowing along with our kommorra, I had seen 
many carts overturned while trying to go around 
the motors that were en panne. Especially do I 
remember one handsome carriage, drawn by a fine 
pair of blacks and containing a man, his wife, and 
several children, to say nothing of what was in all 
probability their entire household possessions. In 
attempting to pass a motor, this carriage tumbled 
over a ten-foot bank into a miniature swamp. 
Owing to the softness of the ground, the family 
escaped serious injury, and immediately continued 
their journey on foot, leaving all in the bog, not 



212 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

even waiting to finish the horses, which were lying 
in distorted positions entangled in the harness and 
wheels. Thousands of soldiers were marching by 
us all this time, and when we camped it was in the 
midst of them. 

Soon after Dr. May's visit, we went to bed in the 
open, there being, indeed, no other place to go. At 
twelve o'clock we were awakened by rain-drops in 
our faces, and until daylight the rain continued in 
torrents. 

We got under way about five o'clock the next 
morning, while it was yet pitch dark, in the hope of 
doing several kilometers before the creeping gla- 
cier of vehicles should begin again. This was hope- 
less, however, for every one else had the same in- 
spiration, and already the road was full. I use 
"road" from habit; on this day it was a turbid 
stream, sometimes ankle-deep, sometimes up to the 
drivers' waists where wet-weather torrents had 
broken their banks and overflowed it. 

Through this highway, long before it was light, 
thousands upon thousands of ox-carts, carriages, 
and automobiles were plowing their way. For the 
most part the road was so narrow that there was 
no chance of passing those in front, the ground on 
each hand being impassable mire. After an hour 



^i"-if: 




Long 1 ruins of oxen were pulling the big guns from the camps along 
the wavside 




In many places on Kossovo swift torrents swept across the road 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 215 

or so, when all the gaps were filled, this meant that 
if far ahead in the environs of Prishtina an ox 
slipped his yoke or a cart-wheel broke or a horse 
balked or an automobile stuck or a driver wished 
to light a cigarette or any other imaginable con- 
tingency came to pass, a few minutes later carts 
just leaving ^litrovitze would be held up until the 
other carts twenty kilometers ahead should move. 
This was the condition on all the mountain roads of 
Serbia. It added at least fifty per cent, to the time 
required to finish one's journey. 

Every one was drenched. Few people had had 
any sort of shelter during the night, and the rain 
had been such as to come through the tiny tents 
some of the more fortunate soldiers possessed. The 
women of the English mission took the road soaked 
to the skin. Either in their miserably covered 
carts, uncomfortably perched on top of the meager 
luggage that they had been able to save or walking 
along beside the drivers when it was possible, I saw 
them pass from the flooded corn-field where they 
had slept, or, rather, spent the night, on to the road. 

The army, too, was beginning to awaken. Long 
trains of oxen — the army, of course, had all the best 
oxen, huge powerful animals, far better than horses 
for the Serbian roads — were pulling the big guns 



216 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

from the camps along the wayside. From twelve 
to twenty teams were required for each gun, and 
even then they had to strain every muscle in the 
frequent mud-holes. They would go forward a 
few meters, all pulling together in a long line, then, 
as the heavy guns sank deeper, some of the wilder 
ones would begin to swing from side to side, oscil- 
lating like a pendulum, each swing wider, until all 
the teams were in hopeless disorder, while yokes 
broke, and drivers cursed. At last they would 
come to a standstill, all the waiting thousands be- 
hind 2:)erforce following their example, bringing 
comparative silence, in the midst of which the Ger- 
man and Serbian cannon could be heard incessantly, 
like rumbling thunder. Then the caravan would 
move on again, only to stop once more. This was 
repeated all day long, each day for weeks and 
weeks. 

During one of these lulls we heard a great com- 
motion behind us. There was a loud trampling 
of men's and horses* feet, and a lot of shouting, 
which steadily grew louder, and finally sounded 
abreast of us. Out in the marshy fields along the 
road I sav/ a thousand or fifteen hundred Serbian 
youths, ranging in age from twelve to eighteen. 
They were the material out of which next year and 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 217 

the succeeding years Serbia was to replenish her 
army. Not yet ripe for service, the Government 
had ordered them out at the evacuation of every 
place, and had brought them along with the army 
in order to save them from being taken by the 
enemy into Austria, Germany, and Bulgaria as 
prisoners of war. For it is these boys the invaders 
are especially anxious to get. They are the force 
of to-morrow, and to-morrow, it has been my ob- 
servation, the Teutonic allies now dread above all 
else in the world. 

One of the Austrian official communiques re- 
cently read, "And here we also took about one hun- 
dred and fifty youths almost ready for military 
service." It is the only official mention I have ever 
seen of such captures, although in the fighting of 
last year they were common. It is a bare state- 
ment of one of the most terrible aspects of the Ser- 
bian retreat. 

The boys I saw in the flooded fields were not 
strangers to me, but now for the first time I saw 
them bearing arms. When the trouble first began 
I had seen these and other thousands all along the 
railway-line from Belgrade. Many for the first 
time in their lives were away from their own vil- 
lages, and most of them had never before been 



218 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

separated from their families. There was no one 
to look after them. They did not even have the 
advantage of a soldier in getting food and shelter. 
If there was bread left over at the military stations, 
they got it ; if not, they did not. Never were they 
sheltered, but slept where they happened to stand 
when night came on. Few of them had sufficient 
clothing; only those whose mothers had been able 
to supply them with the warm, durable, homespun 
garments which the peasants make were adequately 
protected. I used to see the smaller of them sit- 
ting on top the railway-cars crying together by the 
dozens. They were hungry, of course; but it was 
not hunger or thirst or cold; it was pure, old-fash- 
ioned, boarding-school homesickness tliat had them, 
with the slight difference that they longed for homes 
which no more existed. "The capture" of such 
as these to be honored with an official comnni- 
nique! 

When the retreat took them from the railway, 
they marched over the country in droves. There 
were no officers to oversee them. They were like 
antelope, roaming over the wild hills along the Ibar. 
They ate anything they could find, rotten apples, 
bad vegetables, the precious bits of food found in 
abandoned tins, and yet most of them had arrived 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 219 

safe and sound at Mitrovitze, where the Govern- 
ment had large magazines of munitions. 

Now, when the order eame at midnight, h'ke a 
clap of thunder, to evacuate Mitrovitze immedi- 
ately, they were rounded up by some officers on 
horseback, and to each was given a rifle, a canteen, 
and absolutely all the ammunition he could stagger 
under. They were delighted, tickled to death to 
have real guns and to be real soldiers, and as the 
officers were insufficient, they were soon riddling 
the atmosphere with high-jiower bullets in every 
direction, creating a real danger. If a crow flew 
over a mile high, half the company banged at him 
on the instant. A black squirrel in a wayside tree 
called forth a fusillade that should have carried a 
trench in Flanders. 

They were not particular about the aim. There 
were plenty of cartridges and, after all, it was the 
first good time they had had in many a week and 
perhaps the last. 

Joyously they had left Mitrovitze with us the 
afternoon before and, like us, they had camped in 
the open, but here the analogy must rest. We had 
tried to sleep, at any rate, whereas they had made 
night hideous with violent attacks on bats, rats, 
rabbits, and even the moon before the clouds came 



220 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

to her rescue. But they had been soaked and had 
had nothing for breakfast and were getting tired 
of their own exquisite sport. So they were loath 
to march with that enthusiasm and at the rate the 
officers on horseback desired. This accounted for 
the commotion. 

It was very simple. A few would lag, then more 
and more, and soon the entire thousand would sim- 
ply be paddling about in the fields like so many 
ducks. Then the officers, infuriated, would ride 
full tilt into them, heavy riding-whips in their 
hands, and spurs in their horses' sides. I saw many 
of the boys ridden down, tumbled in the mire, and 
stepped on by the horses. Blood streamed from 
the faces of scores of others whom the whips had 
found. The rest at once regained their enthusiasm, 
and i-ushed forward with cries of fear. I saw this 
performance recur several times before the herd 
passed out of sight around a curve. 

JNIonths later I was to learn by sight and report 
the staggering denouement of this childhood drama. 
An account in the "New York Evening Sun" sums 
it up with a clarity and fidehty to detail that is ter- 
ribly adequate: 

When the frontier between Serbia and Albania was 
reached a gendarme told the boys to march straight ahead 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 221 

and pointing to the west, he added, that there would find 
the sea and ships, and then left them. 

Without a leader or guide the boys crossed the frontier 
and marched through Albania in search of the sea and 
the ships which they hoped to find in a couple of days at 
the utmost. They were overtaken and passed by columns 
of old soldiers, armed, equipped, and officered, who gave 
them all the bread they had and encouraged them to fol- 
low. 

No one has described how long it took these boys to 
reach the sea, and how much they suffered from hunger, 
exposure, and fatigue. They ate roots and the bark of 
trees and yet they marched on toward the sea. At night 
they huddled together for warmth and slept on the snow, 
but many never awoke in the morning and every day the 
number decreased until when the column reached Avlona 
only fifteen thousand were left out of the thirty thousand 
that crossed the frontier. 

It is useless to attempt a description of what they suf- 
fered, as the story of that march toward the sea and the 
ships is told and understood in a few words. Fifteen 
thousand died on the way and those who saw the sea and 
the ships "had nothing human left of them but their 
eyes." And such eyes ! 

The Italians at Avlona had no hospital accommodation 
for fifteen thousand. They could not possibly allow 
these Serbian boys covered with vermin and decimated by 
contagious diseases to enter the town. They had them 
encamped in the open country close to a river and gave 
them all the food they could spare, army biscuits and bully 
beef. The waters of the river had unfortunately been con- 
taminated as corpses in an advanced state of decomposi- 



222 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

tion had been thrown in, but the Serbian boj soldiers 
drank all the same. 

By the time that the ship to convey them to Corfu ar- 
rived the fifteen thousand had been reduced to nine thou- 
sand. About two thousand more boys died during the 
twenty-four hours' journey between Avlona and Vido, and 
thus only seven thousand reached the encampment in the 
grove of orange and olive trees by the sea on the island 
of Vido. 

The French and Serbian doctors attached to the en- 
campment said that if it wx-re possible to have a bed for 
each boy, an unlimited supply of milk, and a large staff 
of nurses, perhaps out of the seven thousand boys landed 
at Vido two thirds could be saved. There are no beds, 
no milk, no nurses at Vido, however ; and despite the hard 
work of the doctors and their efforts to improvise a suit- 
able diet, during the last month more than one hundred 
boys have died every day. 

As it is not possible to bury them on the island, a ship, 
the St. Francis d' Assist, steams into the small port of Vido 
every morning and takes the hundred or more bodies out 
to sea for burial. The allied war vessels at Corfu lower 
their flags at half-mast, their crews are mustered on the 
deck with caps off, and their pickets present arms as the 
«S'^. Francis d'Assisi steams by with her cargo of dead 
for burial in that sea toward which the boys were ordered 
to march. 

And the survivors lying on the straw waiting for their 
turn to die, "with nothing human left of them but their 
eyes," must wonder as they look at the sea and the ship 
with the bodies of their dead comrades on board whether 
this is the sea and the ship that the only leader they had, 



' »!S^' 




Kossovo stretched away in tlie dreariest exj)anse imaginable 




Now and then the storm hfted its snow veil 
Crossing the "Field of Blackbirds" in the blizzard 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 225 

the Serbian gendarme that saw them safely to the frontier, 
alluded to when he raised his arm and pointed to the west 
and told them to march in that direction. 

To go through long weeks of horror and pain to 
achieve victory at the end is not easy — we call it by 
superlative names. To go through what the young 
boys of Serbia tasted first in full tragedy on Kos- 
sovo and in succeeding weeks drank to the dregs of 
lonely painful death, is a thing that I, for one, can- 
not grasp. But any American worthy of the name 
who has seen such aspects of life as it has come to 
be in the world would gladly make any effort in 
order to show the honest disciples of unprepared- 
ness in this country even a little of the real terror of 
invasion by a ruthless enemy — and enemies have a 
habit of being ruthless. The Alps of Albania and 
the islands of Greece bear on their gleaming passes 
and their rocky shores the lifeless bodies of twenty- 
three thousand hoys, but the Alps of Switzerland 
still are undotted with the dead of Switzerland, and 
the plains of Holland, separated from a conqueror- 
created hell only by electrified barriers and well- 
trained troops, are not yet soaked with the blood of 
Holland's boys. 

Of course we felt sorry, but something else 
claimed the attention of all. The rain had stopped. 



226 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

Every one began to hope for a bright day, but the 
clouds still hung low, heavy, and purplish gray and 
as we watched the stream of refugees go by a breath 
of distinctly cold wind struck us. 

These refugees were inextricably mixed with the 
army. A rickety little cart drawn by scrawny 
oxen, and containing a whole family's treasured 
possessions, would follow a great gun pulled by its 
fifteen splendid spans. A handsome limousine la- 
boriously accommodated its pace to a captured Aus- 
trian soup kitchen. 

Theoretically the army always had the right of 
way ; but when there is only one way, and it is in no 
manner possible to clear that, theory is relegated 
to its proper place. Few people had sufficient 
transportation to carry even the barest necessities, 
so they waded along in the river of dirty water. 
Dozens of peasant women I saw leading small chil- 
dren by each hand and carrying Indian fashion on 
their backs an infant not yet able to take one step. 
Old men, bent almost double, splashed about with 
huge packs on their shoulders, and many young 
girls, equally loaded, pushed forward with the won- 
derful free step the peasant women of Serbia have, 
while children of all ages filled in the interstices of 
the crowd, getting under the oxen and horses, hang- 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 227 

ing on the automobiles, some whimpering, some 
laughing, some yelling. Every one was wet, every 
one was a mass of mud, every one was hungry, but 
summer was still with us, and no one was freezing. 
Affairs were rapidly approaching the limit of hu- 
man endurance for many in that snake-like, writh- 
ing procession, but as yet none had succumbed. 
Then it began to snow. 

It was about eight o'clock in the morning when 
the blizzard began, first some snow flurries, then a 
bitter cold wind of great velocity and snow as thick 
as fog. The cart in front, the cart behind, the pe- 
destrian stream on each side, and one's-self became 
immediately the center of the universe. How these 
fared, what they suffered, one knew. Beyond or 
behind that the veil was impenetrable. We were 
no more a part of a miserable mob. We were 
alone now, simply a few wretched creatures with 
the cart before and the cart behind, struggling 
against a knife-like wind along a way where the 
mud and water were fast turning to ice. 

In less than an hour our soaked clothes were 
frozen stiff. From the long hair of the oxen slim, 
keen icicles hung in hundreds, giving them a glit- 
tering, strange appearance, and many of them de- 
spite the hard work were trembling terribly with 



228 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

the cold. For a short time the freezing wind ac- 
celerated the pace of the refugees on foot. The 
old men shouted to the women, and the women 
dragged along their children. But soon this energy 
was spent. The hopelessness of their situation was 
too ohvious even for Serbian optimism to ignore. 

Why were they hurrying? There still remained 
a good hundred and fifty miles before the sea, and 
most of this lay over the wildest Balkan mountains, 
infested with bandits, over trails where horses could 
hardly go, and which frequently reached an altitude 
of seven or eight thousand feet. Along that way 
were no houses for days, and not one scrap of food. 
Also, whereas this gale had blown from us the sound 
of the German guns behind, it brought — the first 
time we had heard it — the sound of the Bulgarian 
guns ahead. For as the Germans were sweeping 
down from Rashka, the Bulgarians were striving 
to cut off the line of retreat between Prishtina and 
Prizrend. The last line of hills had been taken. 
No more than six kilometers of level ground and 
the Serbian trenches lay between them and the road. 
For four weeks retreating from one enemy, at last 
we had reached the wide-spread arms of the other 
and, b}7^ all Serbians, the more dreaded invader. 

The plight of these refugees seemed so hopeless. 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 229 

it brought us the ever-recurring question, Why did 
all these people leave their homes? Surely nothing 
the invader could or would do could justify them 
in a thing like this. But all the peasants had heard 
stories of the fate of Belgium, and many had seen 
what the Bulgarians were capable of doing. So 
here they were. It seemed foolish to me, but for 
them it was obedience to an instinct. 

While the wind at no time diminished, now and 
then the storm lifted its snow veil as if to see how 
much was already accomplished in the extermina- 
tion of these feeble human beings. At such times 
we came once more into the life of the throng, and 
it was possible to form some idea of what this whim 
of nature meant. Less than two hours after the 
beginning of the snow the mortality among oxen 
and horses was frightful. Already weakened by 
long marches and insufficient food, the animals now 
began to drop all along the line. When one ox 
of a team gave out, the other and the cart were 
usually abandoned, too, there being no extra beasts. 
An ox would falter, moan, and fall; a few drivers 
would gather, drag the ox and its mate to the side 
of the road, then seizing the cart, they would tumble 
it over the embankment, most frequently contents 
and all ; and then the caravan moved on. Automo- 



230 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

biles also were being abandoned, the occupants con- 
tinuing their journey on foot. 

I find in my notes of this date the following im- 
pressions : 

"On every side the plain stretched away in the 
dreariest expanse imaginable. At great intervals 
a tiny group of miserable huts built of woven withes 
and mud, typical of the Sanjak, was visible through 
the storm. Other than these there was nothing, not 
a trace to indicate that human beings had ever be- 
fore traversed Kossovo. Tall, sear grass and very 
scrubby bush covered the ground as far as the eye 
could reach, until they in turn were covered with 
the snow, leaving only a dead-white landscape de- 
void of variety or form, through the center of which 
the thousands of people and animals crept, every 
one of us suffering, the majority hopeless. Scores 
of dead animals were strewn along the road, and 
many others not yet frozen or completely starved 
lay and moaned, kicking feebly at the passers-by. 
As the day wore on, I saw many soldiers and pris- 
oners, driven ahnost insane, tear the raw flesh from 
horses and oxen, and eat it, if not with enjoyment, 
at least with satisfaction. 

"In many places swift torrents up to the oxen's 
bellies swept across the road. In these carts were 



ON THE FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 231 

lost, and two huge motor lorries that I saw. It was 
impossible to salvage anything. The swift current 
caught the weakened oxen, and before even the 
driver could jump from the cart all was swept off 
the roadway to deep pools below. Sometimes the 
occupants were rescued, sometimes they were not. 
One of the wagons of our kommorra, filled with in- 
valuable food, was swept away, lost beyond re- 
covery. 

"This was heartrending, but as nothing compared 
with the sufferings of the peasant refugees who 
splashed along on foot. By making wide detours, 
they were able to cross these streams, but each time 
they emerged soaked to the skin, only to have their 
garments frozen hard again. 

"We now began to overtake many of the peasant 
families who earlier in the day had gone ahead of 
us, walking being about twice as fast as ox-cart 
speed. They were losing strength fast. The chil- 
dren, hundreds of them, were all crying. Mothers 
with infants on their backs staggered, fell, rose, and 
fell again. 

"Into our little snow-walled circle of vision crept 
a woman of at least sixty, or, rather, we overtook 
her as she moved painfully along. Methodically 
like a junjping-jack, she pulled one weary foot and 



232 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

then the other out of the freezing slush. She had 
no shoes or opanhi. She was utterly alone, and 
seemed to have not the slightest interest or connec- 
tion with any that were passing. Every effort she 
made was weaker than the preceding one. Death 
hy the side of the fleeing thousands stared her in the 
face. A soldier came up, a man of the second line, 
I judged, neither young nor old. Hunger and 
fatigue showed on his unkempt face. The woman 
bumped against him, and the slight impact sent her 
over. He stooped and picked her up, seeing how 
weak she was. Impulsively he threw down his gun 
and heavy cartridge-belt, and half carr}^ing the old 
woman started forward. With every ounce of 
strength she had she jerked away from him, 
snatched up the gun and ammunition, and, holding 
them up to him, motioned where the camion could 
be heard, and she cursed those horrible Serbian 
oaths at him, saying many things that I could not 
understand. Again he tried to help her, but she 
flung the gun at him, and began creeping forward 
again. She must have known that before the next 
kilometer-stone she would be lying helpless in the 
snow. So did we witness a thing that medieval 
poets loved to sing about. It had happened almost 
before we knew. Like a flash of lightning, her act 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 233 

showed the stuff of that woman and of the people 
from which she came; but it was n't poetic. It was 
primitive, crude, and cruel, and it was n't the sort 
of thing I want ever to see or hear about again. 

"For some time I had noticed an old peasant cou- 
ple who moved along just at our speed, staying 
within view. They were very aged even for Serbs, 
and carried no provisions of any sort that I could 
see. The old woman was following the old man. 
I saw them visibly grow weaker and weaker until 
their progress became a series of stumbling falls. 
We came to a place where low clumps of bushes 
grew by the roadside. The snow had drifted 
around and behind them so as to form a sort of 
cave, a niche between them. This was sheltered 
from the gale to some extent. By unspoken con- 
sent they made for it, and sank down side by side 
to rest. Their expression spoke nothing but thank- 
fulness for this haven. Of course they never got 
up from it. This w^as quite the happiest thing I 
saw all that day, for such episodes were repeated 
with innumerable tragic variations scores of times. 
The terrible arithmetic of the storm multiplied them 
until by the end of the day we had ceased to think 
or feel. 

"At last a change came over the army. I think 



234 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

it was the young boys to whom arms had been given 
at JNIitrovitze who began it. After a few hours of 
marching that day everj'^ ounce one had to carry 
counted greatly. Rifles, camp things, and over- 
flowing cartridge-belts are heavy. At first I no- 
ticed now and then a belt or canteen or rifle by the 
roadside. Soon it seemed as if the snow had turned 
to firearms. The surface of the road was thickly 
strewn vnih them ; from every stream bayonets pro- 
truded, and the ditches along the road were clogged 
with them. The boys were throwing away their 
guns and, like a fever, it spread to many soldiers 
until the cast-away munitions almost impeded our 
progress. 

"Although scarcely four o'clock, it began to grow 
dusk. The aspect of the plain seemed exactly the 
same as hours before; we did not appear to have 
moved an inch. Only the road had begun to climb 
a little and had grown even muddier. The snow 
ceased, but the wind increased and became much 
colder. No one seemed to know how far we were 
from Prishtina, but all knew that the oxen were 
worn out and could not go much farther. How- 
ever, to camp out there without huge fires all night 
meant death, and there was nothing whatever with 
which to make fires. 



ON THE FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 235 

"We climbed a hillside slowly. It was darker 
there than it would be on the crest, for the sun set 
before and not behind us. A little before four we 
reached the top. At most we could not travel more 
than thirty minutes longer, but we did not need 
to. Below us lay Prishtina. 

"This ancient Turkish town was very beautiful 
in the dusk. It stands at the head of a broad val- 
ley, and on three sides is surrounded by hills which 
now were gleaming peaks. Lower down, the 
mountains shaded from light blue to deep purple, 
while a mist, rising from the river, spread a thin 
gray over the place itself. Hundreds of minarets, 
covered with ice and snow, j^ierced up like silver 
arrows to a sky now clear and full of stars. The 
snow was certainly over, but it was incredibly cold 
on the hill-crest, where the wind had full sway. 
Some bells in a mosque were ringing, and the sound 
came to us clear, thin, brittle, icy cold. But no 
place will ever seem so welcome again. It was 
blazing with lights, not a house, not a window un- 
lighted, because, as we soon learned, not a foot of 
space in the whole place was unoccupied. On the 
right, down the broad stretch of a valley, for at least 
five miles, was a remarkable sight. We had moved 
in the middle of the refugee wave. The crest had 



23G WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

reached Prishtina the day before, had surged 
through its narrow, crooked, filthy streets, and de- 
bouched over the phiin beyond in tliousands and 
thousands of camps. Now this huge camp-ground 
was hghtcd from one end to the other by camp-fires 
for, blessing of blessings, along the river was fire- 
wood. There must have been five thousand carts 
in that valley. This meant ten thousand oxen and 
five thousand drivers, and every driver had his fire. 
The thing stretched away along the curving river 
like the luminous tail of a comet from the blazing 
head at Prishtina. The contrast from the plain we 
had come over brought exclamations of pleasure 
from every one, and for a minute we paused there, 
watching the ])lodding refugees as they came to the 
top and gazed down into this heaven of warmth and 
light. 

"A woman dragging three children came wearily 
up. There was a baby on her back, but for a won- 
der it was not crying. She stopped, sat down on a 
bank, and had one of the children unfasten the 
cloths that held the baby in position. Then she 
reached back, caught it, brought it around to her 
lap. She shook it, but it was frozen to death. 
There were no tears on her face. She simply gazed 
from it to the children beside her, who were almost 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 237 

exhausted. She seemed foohsh, sitting there hold- 
ing it. She was bewihlered. She did not know 
what to do with it. Some men passed, took in the 
situation, and promi)tly buried it in two feet of 
mud and snow. 'J'he whole affair had lasted per- 
haps ten minutes. 

*'We moved on down the hill into the town, no 
longer a town. It was an inferno. The tens of 
thousands rushing before the Bulgarians and the 
tens of thousands ahead of the Germans met and 
mingled at Prishtina before pushing on their aug- 
mented current to Prizrend. The streets of Prish- 
tina are narrow, so two carts can pass with diffi- 
culty. They wind and double upon themselves in 
the most incongruous maze, and they are filthier 
than any pigsty. The mob filled them as water 
fills the sj)illway of a dam. There were Turks, 
Albanians, Montenegrins, Serbs, English, French, 
Russians, and thousands of Austrian prisoners. 
They crowded on one another, yelled, fought, 
cursed, stampeded toward the rare places where 
any sort of food was for sale. Sneaking close to 
the walls, taking advantage of any holes as shelter 
from this human tornado, were numerous wounded 
soldiers, too lame or too weak to share in the wild 
melee. Here and there in some dim alley or in 



238 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

the gutter dead men lay unnoticed. And every- 
where, on the sidewalks, in the streets, blocking the 
way, were dead animals, dozens and dozens of them. 
There was here not even the semblance of law that 
had obtained at INIitrovitze. The Government was 
crumbling, a nation was dying, and all such super- 
fluities as courts of justice and police were a thing 
of the i^ast. In lieu of street-lamps, however, flar- 
ing pine-torches had been stuck at dark corners, and 
the weird light they afforded put the last unearthly 
touch to the scene. 

"Fighting one's way down these lanes of hell, 
stumbling over carcasses, wading knce-decp in slush 
and refuse, looking into myriads of wild, suffering 
eyes set in faces that showed weeks of starvation 
and hardship, the world of peace and plentiful food 
seems never to have existed. Yet less than two 
weeks before this town was a sleeping little Turkish 
city where food and shelter were to be had for a 
song, and where life took the slow, well-worn chan- 
nels that it had followed for a hundred years. If 
ever there was a hell on earth, Prishtina, which 
from the hilltop yesterday afternoon looked like 
heaven, is that hell. 

"In an hour and a half I came about six blocks 
to a street where shelter had been found for the 



ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 239 

forty English women in a harem where absohitely 
none of this turmoil penetrated. Never before 
have I realized what is the peaee of the harem." 

In regard to this remark in my notes, I would 
say that at Prishtina, at Prizrend, Jakova, and 
Ipek, when the retreat had reaehed its last and 
most terrible stage, before it was shattered to bits 
on the Albanian and Montenegrin mountains, the 
harems invariably proved to be havens of refuge. 
However wild the struggle in the streets without, 
however horrible the situation of the unnumbered 
thousands that descended in a day on these towns, 
however imminent the danger of invasion, life be- 
hind the latticework and bars moved uninter- 
ruptedly, steadily, peacefully, tenderly amid in- 
cense and cushions. The Turk did not suffer for 
food because, at the first hint of danger, each had 
laid in a supply for months. In this region they 
alone had any money; they are the buyers and 
sellers, the business lords of the country, and they 
had nothing to fear from the invasion, for were 
they not of the Teutonic allies? Their kindness to 
the English, French, and Russian nurses every- 
where throughout the retreat is one of the fine 
things to be found in that awful time, and many 
English women I know have gone home with a con- 



240 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

firmed conviction that "the terrible Turk and his 
harem" are a very decent sort after all. 

My notes continue : 

*'Last night I found no shelter here [Prishtina] 
and was forced to follow my ox-cart outside the 
town, where thousands of others were incamped. 
All night long the freezing crowd wandered in the 
streets. Most of them had no blankets. They 
could not lie down on the snow and live. From 
fire to fire they wandered, and always in search of 
food. My blankets were soaked from the rain of 
the night before, but I wrapped them about me and 
lay in the bottom of my cart, an affair made of lat- 
ticework through which the wind whistled. Soon 
the covers were as stiff as boards, and sleep was im- 
possible. Through the night I listened to the oxen 
all around moaning in the plaintive way they have 
when in pain, for there is no haj^ about Prishtina, 
and they are starving. 

"The sun came up this morning in a perfectly 
clear sky except for a slight mist over the moun- 
tains that turned it for a while into a blood-red ball. 
It touched the peaks to pearl and the hundred min- 
arets of Prishtina to shafts of rose. Also, as far as 
the eye could see, it caused instant activity in that 
mighty camp. Men roused themselves and began 



a* 




ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 243 

by thousands to cut wood along the river. Fires 
were replenished, meager breakfasts cooked, oxen 
still more meagerly fed. Along the slope behind 
me I saw a small squad of soldiers approaching. 
There was an army chaplain among them, and some 
men in civilian clothes. They trudged up the hill 
towards the rising sun. I looked on a moment, and 
then followed. Soon they halted. When I came 
up I saw five empty graves. In each a wooden 
stake was firmly driven, and the five men in civilian 
clothes were led to them, forced to step into the 
graves and kneel down with their backs to the 
stakes, where they were tied. Three of them were 
middle-aged and sullen. Two were young, scarcely 
twenty, I judge. They obej'-ed the quiet orders 
mechanically, like automata. One of the younger 
ones turned and gazed out over the camp just 
breaking into life, then he looked at the shining 
peaks and the minarets. From the town came the 
sound of morning bells. For a moment his face 
worked with emotion, but neither he nor his com- 
panions spoke. An officer stepped forward, and 
before each read a long official paper. He spoke 
slowly, distinctly, in the somewhat harsh accents of 
the Serbian language. After this the priest came 
forward and read a service. The men remained 



244 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

silent. When the priest finished, they were blind- 
folded and ten soldiers shot thcni at a distance of 
thirty feet. They pitched forward out of sight, and 
were buried at once. They were Bulgarian spies. 
Along the road below, the kommorras were getting 
under way, more than I had as yet seen, more than 
at Mitrovitze. As I returned down the hill and 
neared the highway they were moving away end- 
lessly, ceaselessly, to renew the endless, hopeless 
march. Ten kilometers down the road the cannon 
began to boom, and the tramping of the oxen on 
the snow and the creaking and rumbling of the 
thousands of carts were like the beating of torren- 
tial rains or the surge of the sea at Biarritz." 



CHAPTER VIII 

BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 

THE day following the great blizzard was 
warm and full of sunshine, so that most of 
the snow was turned to muddy slush, making, if 
possible, the highways more difficult. But cold 
winds soon began again, and while there was no 
more snow, the way of the refugees from Prish- 
tina was anything but easy, the Bulgarian lines, 
only five kilometers distant, adding nothing to its 
attractiveness. 

But I did not move at once with the hordes along 
this part of the way. Instead, I waited for Dr. 
May's ambulance to arrive from Mitrovitze, in or- 
der to make the trip back to that place, according to 
our arrangement. The main part of the English 
unit went on at once, but one Englishman remained 
behind with his cart to take on the man who was 
bringing the ambulance. He was to have over- 
taken us the day before, but did not, and so we were 
momentarily expecting him. However, not until 
late afternoon did he arrive ; so that I had a whole 

245 



246 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

day of idleness in Prishtina, and did not start back 
to ^litrovitze until next morning. 

Although unnumbered thousands were leaving 
all the time, more poured into Prishtina to take their 
places, and all that day the congestion remained 
constant. As soon as the English party had gone, 
I wandered out into this maelstrom purely as a 
sight-seer. It felt queer, after so many weeks of 
retreating, during which always "the great affair 
was to move," to have nothing to do but loaf and 
watch others flee. In the bright sunshine the 
streets were not weird, as they had appeared the 
evening before, though quite as revolting and terri- 
ble. 

I went first out on a long search for small change. 
Every one had been hoarding their silver money 
for weeks, and things had come to such a pass now 
that one could not buy even the scant things that 
were for sale unless he had the exact change or was 
willing to give the seller the difference. After a 
dozen or more futile attempts I foimd a druggist 
who was willing to give me silver francs for gold, 
but franc for franc, although gold was now at a 
great premium. 

Shortly after this fortunate find I wandered to 
the principal square of the place, on one side of 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 247 

which stood an immense stone building which was 
temporarily occupied by the General Staff. Strings 
of new American touring-cars were drawn up in 
front of it. They were piled high with baggage, 
and the chauffeurs were standing alertly around, 
as if expecting urgent orders. Xo one knew when 
instant evacuation might be necessary. 

On another side of the square was the office of 
the narchelnik stanitza, whom the Englishman, Mr. 
Stone, and I now sought out on some trivial busi- 
ness. At his outer door we met Mrs. St. Claire 
Stobart, who, unknown to Dr. May's section of her 
unit, had come into Prishtina that morning with 
the second army. 

When hostilities were renewed last autumn, Mrs. 
Stobart left her main unit at Kragujevats, and with 
several ambulances, hospital tents, doctors, nurses, 
and orderlies formed what was imofficially known 
in Serbia as the "flying corps." They followed the 
army in all its moves from northern Serbia to Ipek. 
This necessitated forced march, sometimes of thir- 
ty-six hours' duration. It frequently meant three 
or four moves in twenty- four hours, and much more 
traveling at night than in daylight. It required 
taking automobiles where automobiles had never 
been before, and where it will be long before they 



248 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

are again. It entailed an endless routine of put- 
ting up and hauling down tents, of scanty meals 
and broken rest, of being cold and soaked and tired 
to death. The chauffeurs were men, but much of 
the most arduous labor was done, and done su- 
perbly well, by young girls. 

For instance, the authoritative person who was 
responsible for the proper putting up and taking 
down of the numerous tents was a London girl of 
scarcely twenty. How would you like to see to 
the striking of four or five large tents in the dead of 
a freezing night, while the wind was blowing great 
guns, and the orderlies, whose language you could 
not speak, were so numb they would not work? 
How would you like to be held responsible for the 
placing of everything in the proper order, only to 
be forced to pitch the lot again after a sleepless ride 
of hours in a springless cart, or perhaps spent in 
pushing an ambulance through mud-holes, when all 
the army had gone past and nothing remained be- 
tween you and the enemy, but a few kilometers of 
road? How would you like to subsist on black 
bread and thin soup and get so little of it that when 
meal-time came you felt like a wolf in famine. 
Three months after I saw the flying corps at Prish- 
tina I met this young lady again. It was Sunday 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 249 

evening, and we were dining in the pretentious 
restaurant of a pretentious New York hotel. The 
room was filled with beautiful women in beautiful 
clothes, who laughed and sparkled, sij^ped their 
wine, and toyed with their food; but none of them 
laughed or sparkled or sipped or toyed with greater 
vivacity and light-hearted charm than this luxuri- 
ous jgirl whose pastimes it had been to watch Ger- 
man "busy-Berthas" drop seventeen-inch shells 
about her hospital in Antwerp, or to pitch frozen 
tents on bleak Serbian hills for shot-riddled men to 
die in. Since seeing the English women in Serbia 
and elsewhere, a wonder which never troubled me 
previously has been daily growing in my mind. 
Why does n't England turn over this war to her 
women? 

This by way of digression. Mrs. Stobart had 
business at general headquarters, and we accom- 
panied her there, I being secretly gratified. I had 
been wishing for some pretext to take me into that 
building, teeming with its harassed and desperate 
officers, but in war-time, and such war, one does not 
scout about without some good excuse. Quite in- 
tentionally I got lost for a little while, and went 
about peering into doors to see what the general 
staff of an army such as the Serbian one was at that 



250 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

moment looked like. The main thing I remember 
is that in many of those rooms where the staff offi- 
cers worked were piles of hay in the corners where 
they slept, littered boxes standing about off which 
they dined, and portemanteaux out of which they 
lived. Ordinarily the Serbian officer is the smart- 
est and most faultlessly got up of any of the armies. 
There were haggard-looking men at the rough 
tables covered with maps and documents. Halting 
cheechas went to and fro as messengers, and here 
and there in dark places orderlies cleaned much- 
bespattered gaiters or burnished dull swords and 
rusty pistols. Of course nowhere that I stuck my 
head was I wanted but at the simple remark, 
"Engleske mission," all my imbecility seemed cov- 
ered by a cloak, or at least explained to them; so 
much so that I decided to use it instead of "Ameri- 
canske" in future, and continued to wander a bit. 
They were faced with awful things, this General 
Staff who dined from tin-cans and slept on hay, but 
in some manner they seemed to be getting their 
work done. 

It was now about eleven o'clock, and as Mr. 
Stone and I had breakfasted early on a handful of 
corn-bread and some cognac, we followed INIrs. Sto- 
bart with what may be described as the keenest 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 251 

pleasure back of the general staff building, where 
the flying corps were serenely encamped in a side 
street. We had dined the previous evening, after 
that blizzard march, on a bit of cheese, some tinned 
meat, and hard tack, and before that we had dis- 
pensed with lunch, and still before that had break- 
fasted on tea and biscuits, and before that a back- 
ward vista of tinned mutton and sweet biscuit too 
long and monotonous to be recounted in one modest 
volume. Hence when we saw the Austrian gou- 
lash Kanone that the flying corps had acquired 
steaming in the midst of the automobiles, we looked 
upon the world and saw that it was good. We had 
coffee and cheese and cocoa and rice and nearly 
white bread and a hearty welcome from the corps. 
Greatly did I fortify myself, for I saw no chance 
of anything more until I should arrive at Mitro- 
vitze next day. 

In mid-afternoon the long-expected ambulance 
arrived, much the worse for the wear of the road. 
By this time the traffic had completely destroyed 
all effects of any road-building that had ever been 
done on the Plain of Kossovo. The rest of the day 
I spent fitting on new tires, plenty of which the fly- 
ing corps let me have, and overhauling the car in 
general. 



252 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

An English clergyman, Mr. Rogers, had come 
over on the ambulance from INIitrovitze, but was 
determined to go back with me, there to remain 
with the women doctors and nurses who were stay- 
ing behind with the wounded sister. In all hkeli- 
hood this meant his internment until the end of the 
war, whereas there was a good chance for the women 
who stayed being allowed to return home. Also, 
there appeared to be no great necessity of his re- 
maining; but he knew and I knew that it would 
make the women feel a little more protected. It 
seemed to me an act thoroughly in character with 
the best sort of Englishman, and the kind I had al- 
ways expected from them, though after what I had 
seen of British men in Serbia, it came as a distinct 
surprise to me. I was indeed glad to have him as a 
companion for the return trip to JNIitrovitze the 
next day. 

That night I discovered a hay-loft belonging to 
a jolly old Turk who would not let me set foot in 
his harem, but assured me of an unlimited welcome 
to his hay. The mercury dropped to the neighbor- 
hood of zero as night came on, and it was a great 
comfort to be able to burrow into the very center 
of a great stack of warm hay, a fine improvement on 
my cart of the previous night. 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 253 

About five next morning I rolled out of my nest, 
and spent an hour in violent contortions incident 
to cranking the frozen motor before daylight. Mr. 
Rogers had some dry bread, which we ate, and 
then we started on our return journey. 

On the top of a hill outside the town we came to 
four large guns standing beside the road, and be- 
yond, in a muddy grain-field, we saw a little group 
of tents. 

"It must be some of Admiral Troubridge's men," 
said Rogers. "I should like to stop and speak to 
them a minute." 

"All right," I replied. "I '11 sit in the car." 

In a few minutes he came back and asked me if 
I would like a cup of hot coffee, real coffee. Would 
I! We wallowed through the field to the tents, 
where we found a cheecha broiling meat over a 
camp-fire, and between times watching a large ket- 
tle of porridge and the coffee-pot. We entered the 
largest of the tents, which we found warm and dry, 
hay a foot deep on the ground, and braziers of coals 
making everything comfortable. I think there 
were eighteen or twenty men lying about, and a 
more cheerful, hospitable crowd could not be found 
anywhere. We had excellent jams, coffee, tea, 
rice, and beef for breakfast, and they made Rogers 



254 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

bring away some potatoes and beans to help out his 
provisions at IMitrovitze. These tilings had mostly 
been sent out from home before the trouble began. 

JNIore than half of the men looked scarcely older 
than boys. I remember one "mother's boy" who 
did not look eighteen, with his innocent blue eyes, 
curly hair, and cheeks as fresh as a baby's. But 
they had all seen hard enough service, having been 
unrelieved at Belgrade since the preceding INIarch. 
The}'^ gleefully related to me how they had got into 
Serbia. 

They left England on a battle-ship which took 
them to INIalta. There they disembarked, and their 
uniforms were taken from them, but each was given 
a suit of citizen's clothes. They assured me that 
these were the worst clothes that anybody ever had 
to wear for the sake of his country. Rigged out in 
this ludicrous raiment, — the Government had seen 
no necessity of taking their measures, — they 
boarded a passenger-boat, and came to Saloniki as 
"commercial travelers." They were allowed little 
time to ply their trade, however, for a train was 
waiting to whisk them across the Serbian border, 
where they resumed their real character. 

These marines represented all that England did 
toward the actual defense of Serbia until the last 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 255 

attack. There were eight guns stationed in and 
around Belgrade, and a forty-five-foot steam- 
launch that had been ingeniously fitted with tor- 
pedo-tubes. In the first encounter that this heavy 
craft had with the enemy, it attacked two Austrian 
monitors, sinking one and forcing the other to re- 
turn to Semlin, where afterward it succeeded in 
keeping such dangerous boats bottled up. The 
work of their guns, they said, had been greatly 
hampered by the activity of Austro-German aero- 
planes. These immediately spied out any position 
they would take, and directed the enemy's fire ac- 
cordingly. In Belgrade and throughout the re- 
treat the French aviators appeared either unable or 
unwilling to give any protection against scouting 
and bomb-throwing. The opinions which those 
marines expressed would, to say the least, have 
shocked the boulevards. 

In expressing freely adverse opinions about their 
allies, the marines were no exception to other Brit- 
ish soldiers with whom I came in contact. My ex- 
perience among British military men has not been 
wide, but within its narrow scope I never heard one 
of them say a good word for anybody except the 
Germans. It seems to be an axiom among them, 
a tradition from which there is no appeal, this in- 



256 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

significance of all but the British and of the enemy 
that has taught them many things. I heard very 
little mention of German atrocities in Serbia, but 
generous praise from British men and officers of 
German efficiency and bravery. These marines 
despised the Serbian soldiers, spat on the Italians, 
tolerated the French. I am not sure they knew 
Russia was fighting. 

"What do you think?" one of the older of them 
said to me. "These Serb boys don't get anything 
for serving! Now, is n't that calculated to make a 
man fight with a good heart, not getting a penny, 
and knowing that his wife or mother won't get any- 
thing! Are n't they a fine lot, now?" 

This man was a fine fellow, and, I am sure, as 
unselfish and brave a soldier as England has, al- 
though he would be horrified if you told him so. 
His own solid, well-ordered, comfortable system 
represented to him all that could possibly be good 
in the world. Of the indefinable, even mystic, mo- 
tive force which drove hundreds of thousands of 
ignorant Serbian peasants, in a fight that from the 
first was hopeless, to face separation from every- 
thing which human beings prize, and to endure tor- 
tures the like of which armies have seldom known 
in order that those who did not die might return to 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 257 

renew the holy war, of a very practical patriotism 
for a very beautiful and ideal cause, he knew noth- 
ing. If you had asked him why he was fighting, 
he would have told you because it was his business, 
and to his business, whatever it may be, he has a de- 
votion that makes him one of the most formidable 
of enemies. Government says fight, and ages of 
experience have taught him that Government 
usually has something worth while up its sleeve 
when it says fight ; so, volunteer or regular, he fights 
with bravery and abandon. It seems to me that 
the average British soldier follows his Government 
with an implicit faith surpassed only by the Ger- 
mans. 

The difference in this war lies in the wide gulf 
that separates the somewhat less dangerous desires 
of the one Government from the altogether dan- 
gerous and abominable ambitions of the other. 
The soldiers of both nations follow without very 
much thought as to the real objects at stake. But 
most French know pretty well why they are fight- 
ing, and you can be assured the average Serb knows 
why. Whether you believe in the Serb's ambitions 
or not, you instantly see that he believes in them, 
worships them, dies for them with a gladness that 
takes little account of self or family. It would be 



2:)8 Wmi SKIUUA IN'IX) KXILK 

utterly impossible for ;i Serbian slatosmnii to hold 
his nation at bay while he Avrote hnH' a dozen notes 
on such a thino' as the Liisildiiid. no nialter how big 
the ott'ender. It' it meant sure defeat, they >vould 
still jnmp in and tight t'or their liberty until utterly 
exhausted. They ean not help it; they are built 
that way. They may or may m^t be too extreme in 
this. It is well t'or Amerieans, who ean sit eahnly 
ami weigh tlie advantages and disadvantages of 
lighting no matter what is involved, to rcalizi' that 
siieh peoples do exist. 

Of course, in trying to make even the slightest 
analysis of the t'eelings oi' various armies, one is 
treading a path hopelessly eon fused by numerous 
cxeeptions; but, after all, tliere is a eonunon type 
whieh ean be more or less sharply defined. 1 sim- 
ply wish to state the impression, perhajis entirely 
erroneous, whieh the Hritish scWdiers 1 saw, and the 
Serbian soliliers I lived with, made on me. 

As ISIr. Kogers and T breakfasted, they told us 
of their work at Belgratle and their retreat. Near 
Nish they liad lost two of their guns. These had 
beeome bogged on a mountain-side, and the enemy 
was so close l)ehind that there was no time to dig 
them out, but only to blow them up and hurry away. 
There were four guns with them at Prishtina, but 



HKinXJ) THE LIVING WAVK 259 

ammunition was running low. "Only fifty rounds- 
left, " one told us, "hut fifteen of thern are 191.5 
lyddite, arjd, I tell you, sir, when you name it, take 
off your hat, for you 're in tlie presence of your 
Maker!" 

The next morning — for I returned that way next 
day — I stopped to leav^e some medicine which Mr. 
Rogers had sent them, and had hreakfast with them 
once more. This was the last I saw of them until 
three weeks later, when we again met on the hleak, 
wind-swept pier at Plavnitze, where we waited to 
take the tiny boat across the kike to Scutari. 

Xo one would have recognized them. I'or two 
weeks they had been crossing the mountains. 
Their own stores having been exhausted, they had 
had to live as the Serbian soldiers had been living for 
at least ten weeks. It was an interesting compari- 
son in endurance. Under regular conditions all of 
these men would hav^e been pitched into an ambu- 
lance and taken to a base hospital. One week 
more, and most of tliem would surely have died. 
Their spirit was splendid. One staggered up to 
me, — he of the lyddite worship, — and when I in- 
quired how he felt, said he was all right, and even 
had something to be thankful for. His gun was 
the only one that had not been destroyed. They 



'200 WITH SKKIUA INTO KXILK 

had iliiLi" :i ho\c and Iniriod it intaot! His devotion 
to that Liun >vas as siiu'civ a thino* as I cvor saw. 
llarilly had lie tinishoil spoakini;" Nvhon he tainted 
l>ot\M-o my cvts t'riMn cxlianstion and starvation. 
Several o( his comrades also had to be carried on to 
the boat. 

AN'ben tinally we returnetl to our ear and took tlie 
road a^ain, we eneounlered a ibtheully wliieli was 
entirely unlVireseen. Hottoniless uuid-holes, deej) 
ruts, impossible hill-elimbs 1 expeeted as a matter 
o^ course, but I liad not exactly realized what it 
meant to n'o against the tiile oi' rct'uii'ccs even yet 
pouring toward Prishtina, to be the only persons in 
the country going toward the invader. The am- 
bulance explained us to scmuc in the incredulous 
mass we passed, but many there were wlio, seeing 
we were t'oreigners, and ccMichuling we had lost our 
way. made t'ren/ied gestures intheating the folly of 
our course. Scmuc o\' them would not be deterred 
from their well-meant warnings, but, j)lacing them- 
selves in our path, forced us to stop and listen to 
their harangues, which we could not understand. 
As we drew away from Prishtina, however, the 
refugees thinned, and before we came to INlitrovitze 
we had seen the last of these hordes. 

Around iSIitrovitze itself there were great camps 



BKIIIXD THE LIVING WAVK 201 

<>i' arrny-transports, which wcrt rJelaying to the last 
rriinuU; jj.nrJ never ;^ot away. When we earne into 
the town we fV^und its aspect much changed. AW 
traces of tjje rnad riot irj which J had seen the ^Ad- 
miral and tiie OjloneJ wtrt gone. 'J'he dirt.v, prim- 
itive streets were empty and silent; where had heen 
terror and panic, was only ominous solitude. 
Nearly every house was tightly shut, hoards hav- 
ing heen nailed over the windows of many of them. 
Only soldiers were to he seen, and now and then a 
leisurely Turk waddJing hy. ^\ round the caaern a 
large numher of soldiers were hringing fieJd-guns 
into position, and aJso ahout the hospital, not far 
away, air-craft-defense guns were heing set up. 
Feehly armed, Mitrovitze awaited her inevitable 
fate. 

My mission was in vain. The unfortunate nurse 
could not he moved again in any circumstances. 
She had already \)tcn completely exhausted hy 
thirty-six hours of continuous journey in a spring- 
less cart over roads so rough that the automobile 
was thought worse than the primitive cart. 
Imagine making a trip Jike this when one had heen 
.shot through both lungs and the temperature is 
ahout zero. Think of being put down in an over- 
crowded military hospital, with cannon giiarding 



262 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

it from bombs and witli the enemy expected any 
lunir. Picture having to lie there day after day 
hstening' to the guns without and the moaning of 
the wounded within, dei)rived of proper food. Can 
you conceive of a mere girl living through such an 
experience? Yet I understand that she has re- 
covered. Needless to say, she is a British woman. 
It was decided that I should return to Dr. JNIay, 
whom I would find at Prizrend, with the ambulance, 
taking letters, and, if possible, come back to ^litro- 
vitze with whatever provisions could be spared by 
the unit. The food situation at JNIitrovitze was 
serious. This plan meant a race against time. 
The Germans were right on the town, and would 
certainly come in after two or three days. I woidd 
have to retm-n before they took the place or I could 
not get in. Although my bargain with Dr. INIay 
in return for the care of the three British nurses 
placed me unconditionally at the orders of her doc- 
tors at INIitrovitze, they kindly put the matter up to 
me as to whether I cared to return to INIitrovitze. 
No one could have been anything but glad to be 
of the slightest service to these women Avho were 
cheerfully remaining behind with their wounded 
companion. However, the question was arbitra- 
rily settled for me within forty-eight hours. 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 263 

A well-known army surgeon, an Austro-Serb, 
who had been attending the wounded girl was to 
accompany me to Prizrend. In all prrjbability, 
capture for him meant summary execution, and 
while he was loath to go, the others insisted that it 
was a useless sacrifice for him to remain. There 
were other physicians who could care for the pa- 
tient. This doctor was a man of broad education, 
unusual culture, and polished manner. He spoke 
five or six languages, and, besides being a physician 
of high rank, was a delightful conversationalist on 
almost any subject. He was a man who had a com- 
prehensive, intelligent, sympathetic view of inter- 
national questions, a fine product of the best in 
civilization. He was the sort of man the United 
States seems rarely to get as an ambassador an}^- 
where. All that kept him from being marched out 
into a corn-field and shot like a dog was a few kilo- 
meters of road. He had left the land of his birth, 
and had gone to the land of his choice to join him- 
self to the people whose nature corresponded to his 
own; for this he would be shot. His case is a 
glimpse at the under side of Balkan politics. The 
method which without doubt would be applied to 
him if he were caught has been applied unnum- 
bered times perhaps by all the Balkan countries, 



264 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

but certainly on a greater and more heartless scale 
by Austria. It is logical and simple. It is the 
only way to hold together polyglot empires made 
up of unwilling remnants that have been torn from 
peoples burning for that illusive thing called na- 
tionality. 

The correct definition and establishment of this 
nationality seems to me to be the greatest question 
in the world to-day. It can never be based on 
racial differences, because the blood strahis are 
hopelessly mixed; nor on language boundaries, be- 
cause people who could not possibly live together 
frequently speak the same tongue ; nor on religious 
differences, because peoples of the same faith vary 
widely in location, temperament, and progress; 
nor on topography, because such "natural barriers" 
mean less and less as communication is perfected; 
nor on the previous ownership of territory, for 
whereas one nation may be the possessor to-day, 
another w^as the daj'- before: on the preference of 
the people concerned, and on that alone, will any 
sort of satisfactory scheme ever be built up, di- 
rected, of course, and modified somewhat by essen- 
tial economic considerations. When this principle 
is followed, Austria will find herself no longer 
forced to hang whole villages, and shoot and burn 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 265 

and terrorize as in Bosnia since 1878 she has had 
to do, because Bosnia will no more be Austrian. 
However, several million pages may still be writ- 
ten about this matter without exhausting its dif- 
ficulties, and mine is not the story of things as they 
might be, but of things as they were in Serbia dur- 
ing the ten weeks it took to make her once more a 
part of the polyglot system. 

This interesting doctor, whose name I do not feel 
free to mention, and I started from Mitrovitze in 
the freezing dawn of the day following the after- 
noon on which I had arrived. We faced a chilling 
wind as we descended to the bleak and now empty 
Plain of Kossovo. It had been only three days 
since I had taken the same road, but how different 
now! Ragged patches of snow still spotted the 
earth, souvenirs of the blizzard, but where was the 
creaking procession that had suffered so that day? 
The question came to mind, and with it a picture 
of them as they must be, still floundering some- 
where farther along the road. Their trail had been 
left tljere on the desolate plateau, written in a 
waste of debris and objects too repulsive for 
description. What had been a country, was now 
a desert, strewn with unburied people and ani- 
mals, in which there was no food, no drink, no eco- 



266 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

nomic life, no trace of happiness. The whole world 
suggested a feeling of suspense, a waiting for some- 
thing unknown, such as one feels in a theater when 
the warning bell has rung. 

The road had dried somewhat, so we went along 
with less difficulty. We came within view of 
Prishtina about ten o'clock, but it was one before 
we had traversed the to\\Ti. This delay was due to 
the fact that the huge hommorras about the place 
were all breaking up, and the narrow streets were 
literally deluged with ox-carts. New York traffic 
policemen could not have handled that mass, and 
there was no guiding hand. The result was a jam 
so inextricable that for two days many carts in the 
town did not move at all. People camped under 
their chariots, and the oxen lay down by their 
yokes. At last we found a way that skirted the 
town and which, because it was nothing but a marsh, 
was less crowded than the central streets. The 
liquid mud came up into my motor when we ran 
along the shallowest part, a narrow strip in the cen- 
ter of the roadway; on each hand was mire that 
would have swallowed the machine whole, as some 
ox-carts that had strayed there only too plainly 
told us. Luck and that marvelous little engine 
were with us, and just at lunch-time we came in 




A ii.y<i\i]) of truD.sfKjrl, drivers 




\\ Jiitl JiH'l ])ccti ;i country wius now u desert 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 269 

sight of the Stobart "flying corj)s," camped on the 
farther side of the town. I was surprised to see 
them still in Prishtina, but also delighted, for it 
meant some sort of lunch. 

We were welcomed, fed, and again took the road, 
but with an addition to the party. In case the 
Germans took JMitrovitze before I returned from 
Prizrend, I, of course, would not come back. In 
this contingency ]Mrs. Stobart wished the ambu- 
lance with her corps, though I was at a loss to see 
why, for it was then most obvious that everything 
had gone to smash, and nothing was left but for the 
units to get out as best they could. However, she 
asked to send a Serbian chauffeur, Peter, along with 
us to bring back the car in case I should not need it. 

Peter was a typical Serbian chauffeur; when I 
have said that I have said the worst thing I can. 
About fifteen kilometers out was the most threat- 
ened spot in the whole route. For a short time the 
Bulgarians had succeeded in taking the road here, 
but had been driven back again, and the line was 
then three or four kilometers east of the road, the 
ground between being almost level farmlands. 
Here the Serbians had temporarily intrenched 
themselves, and were endeavoring to hold the enemy 
back from the road as long as possible. Farther 



270 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

on, the road drew away from the battle-Uiie, and in 
the rear, Prishtina was not as yet threatened. It 
was siniply this small salient which was in mimedi- 
ate danger, and, as it happened, here the road was 
not at all bad. It was level and smooth, and wide 
enough to enable us to rmi past the trains of mili- 
tary transports, hospitals, and artillery that were 
hastening to get past this danger-pomt. For some 
inscrutable reason a deep hole had been dug on our 
side of the road, a pit perhaps five feet deep, four 
feet long, and three wide, running lengthwise with 
the road. We were going fast, the hole was plainly 
to be seen, and there was ample room to right and 
left of it, but Peter, with splendid nonchalance, 
preferred to take it straight ahead, on the jump. 
The front wheels hit the farther edge, bringmg us 
to quite the quickest stop, with the exception of 
one that was to follow a few hours later, which I 
have ever made. 

When we picked ourselves off the floor of the car, 
we found our Ford with its nose in the ground and 
its heels in the air, like a terrier digging for a chip- 
munk, a position never digiiified for an automobile 
and particularly out of place, it seemed to me, just 
four kilometers behind a very fickle battle-line. 
Peter crawled out fii-st, remarking casually in very 



BEHIXD THE LIVING WAVE 271 

bad German, his only language besides Serbian, 
that he did not know what in heaven was the mat- 
ter with the steering-gear. Whatever may have 
been its previous state and condition, that impor- 
tant feature of an automobile's anatomy was cer- 
tainly "on the blink" now. Yet nothing other than 
tlie triangle was injured in the slightest. I really 
never wrote an advertisement in my life, and shall 
not begin now, but when a car can stand up against 
Peter's idea of sport with nothing except the tri- 
angle injured (which was not made at Detroit, but 
in a Serbian shop), it deserves honorable mention 
in the despatches, and a new triangle. 

The moment I looked at those tortured, twisted 
rods, I knew that we would never be able to 
straighten them so that they could be induced to 
fit again. But the optimistic Peter did not share 
my views, and was confident we could straighten 
them in a jiffy. It was then about three o'clock, 
the sun was nearing the horizon in a perfectly clear 
sky, and the temperature was not far above zero. 
In passing, it may be said that every account I 
have ever seen of the Balkans in winter lays fre- 
quent and eloquent stress on the peculiarly pene- 
trating cold. One writer who had endured the un- 
believable temperatures of Siberia, said that he had 



272 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

never felt anything like this damp, searching, con- 
gealing chill, which nothing seems thick or warm 
enough to shut out. They do not exaggerate; the 
Balkan cold cannot be overstated. I tried my best 
in stem Anglo-Saxon to do it while I wrenched and 
hammered and squeezed with gloveless hands the 
frozen steel, but it was hopeless. Nothing I could 
think of to say even approached an adequate ex- 
pression of that cold. A good part of my conver- 
sation on the weather was really meant for Peter, 
but he was none the wiser. Yet even at this stage 
I had not lost my temper. I was sorry afterward 
that I had not ; it left me with so much reserve force 
a little later when I really did blow up. 

I was holding the misused triangle as firmty as 
it is possible for numb blue hands to do while Peter 
attempted inexpertly to smooth out the numerous 
spots where the rods had buckled. My appearance 
would have done credit to a Gipsj^ I was ragged, 
covered with mud, and my coat, which a tall Eng- 
lishman had given me at Prishtina to replace the 
one torn by the ox, was yards too long for me. It 
flapped sadly about my knees in the biting wind. 
As I bent over the iron rod, my face was hidden by 
a tattered felt hat. So intent was I on the work 
that I did not see a major ride up and dismount. 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 273 

He was a smart officer, whose glory, however, had 
been somewhat tarnished by sleeping in haystacks 
and pigstys. This also had not improved his tem- 
per. From the demeanor of his attendants it was 
plain that he was a dreaded man. What he saw 
was an ambulance in trouble, with the doctor in 
spotless uniform standing beside it and a fairly 
decent-looking Serbian soldier hammering on some 
steel rods which were being infirmly held by a non- 
descript beggar evidently requisitioned for the job. 
It was not any of his business, but, oh, cursed spite ! 
he was the sort born to set all things right. 

I first became aware of stentorian tones shouting 
what I recognized as the vilest Serbian epithets. 
The voice threatened instant annihilation, and 
looking up in astonishment, I saw his gestures 
threatened likewise. I was not holding the rod to 
suit him. My feet were ice, my ears were ice, my 
nose was ice, my hands aching, skinned, covered with 
frozen blood, all because of an idiotic chauffeur who 
had run us into a hole and insisted on trying a job I 
knew to be hopeless, and now — this specimen! 
You know the sensation — all your injured feelings, 
acquired and inherited, coming suddenly to a head 
in the sublime detestation of one person. With ex- 
quisite relief I turned on him a torrent of abuse, an 



274 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

orgy of anger, saying everything that as a little 
boy I could remember I had been taught not to say. 
Still, what I said to him did not equal what he had 
said to me ; nothing can equal Serbian oaths in vile- 
ness. But the next minute I was thoroughly 
ashamed of myself. The troop had stood petrified 
when I had shouted at him. They could not believe 
their ears, but when he heard my English and saw 
my face, he slumped completely. I never saw a 
deeper humiliation. Of all things, the Serbs avoid 
most even the appearance of impoliteness to 
foreigners, especially neutrals engaged in relief- 
work. The major's mistake, not my retaliation, 
crushed him. Sputtering some sort of broken 
apology, he meekly mounted his horse and rode 
away, leaving me quite as conscience-stricken as he. 
After wasting three precious hours, Peter came 
to my way of thinking and agreed to follow out an 
arrangement which I had suggested some time be- 
fore, and which was made more reasonable when a 
military hospital came by and took the doctor with 
most of his luggage along with them. Peter was 
to walk back to Prishtina, secure a new triangle 
from the flying corps' supplies, and return early 
next morning. We would then fix the car, pick up 
the doctor at the next town, where he said the hos- 



BEHIXD THE LIVING WAVE 275 

pital would camp, and go on our way. I was to 
stay with the disabled ambulance in the meantime. 

Soon I was left alone, w^ith half a pound of black 
bread for dinner and only one ])lanket for covering. 
The bare fields round about afforded no material 
for a fire. jNIy three heavy blankets had been stolen 
from the car on the previous day, leaving me in a 
bad situation. Woolen blankets w^ere getting to 
be worth a great deal, for it was impossible to buy 
them. Fortunatelj'-, the English unit had evacu- 
ated with a plentiful supply, from which I was later 
refurnished. It w^as ridiculous that a person's life 
should depend upon two or three blankets, and yet 
this was virtually the case at that time. 

This night, after closing as tightly as I could all 
the curtains of the ambulance, I lay down in the 
place designed for stretchers, with my piece of 
bread and my blanket. It was not warm there, but 
after m}^ night in the cart at Prishtina, it did not 
seem so bad. Of course it would have been much 
better to have spent the night tramping about to 
keep up circulation, but fatigue made this almost 
impossible. So I lay and shivered, watching the 
blue moonlight through the rents in the curtains. 

The noisy traffic on the road had ceased. The 
tired men and oxen had long since turned from the 



27G WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

melancholy road to desolate camps, those behind 
thinking that on the morrow they would pass the 
danger-point, those ahead feeling a sense of com- 
parative securitj^ because it was passed. But I 
thought I heard more distinctly than formerly the 
rapid-fire guns and rifles crackling across the fields. 
It seemed to me the firing was freshening, but I 
was too tired to think about it very much and dozed 
for a time. I was awakened by the sound of an 
automobile rushing by at full speed, with the cut- 
out wide open. Then began a stre.'^m of cars tear- 
ing past, which, crawling from my shelter, I recog- 
nized as the motors of the General Staff. Prishtina 
was being evacuated at midnight and seemingly in 
something of a hurry. Furthermore, beyond the 
cornfields things were unmistakably getting more 
lively. 

I was not left long in doubt as to what was hap- 
pening. A large touring-car slowed up as it ap- 
proached me, and from the running-board a figure 
sprang which I recognized as Peter carrying the 
coveted triangle. The automobile had not stopped 
completely, but shot away again without losing a 
minute. In German, Peter announced that Prish- 
tina was being evacuated, that the Serbs expected 
to retreat across the road, and that we had three 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 277 

hours in which to repair the car and get away. 
"We must work very quickly, very quickly," he 
remarked, and in true Serb fashion therewith put 
down his burden, seated himself on the running- 
board, leisurely pulled out a package of tobacco, 
then cigarette-papers, carefully made a beautiful 
cigarette, hunted listlessly through each of his 
many pockets, and at last asked me for a match. 
When I handed it to him from under the car where 
I had scuttled at his first words, he lighted the 
cigarette, and began smoking, rapturously drawing 
in the fumes as if he were passing a dull hour gaz- 
ing out of a club window. Nor did my heated re- 
marks move him to hasten. Lying there in the 
freezing mire, hammering my fingers in the dark- 
ness, I hated him almost as I had hated the major. 
The fighting came closer. We could now spot in a 
general way the position of the machine-guns as 
they sputtered, and the rifle-fire became a host of 
separate sounds, like raindrops falling, rather than 
the conglomerate cracking we had heard before. 
A triangle is a troublesome thing for two inexpert 
men to put in at any time; now it seemed as if it 
would never be made to fit. We had no light, and 
under the chassis it was almost pitch-dark despite 
the placid arctic moon that sailed overhead. I did 



•278 WITH SERBIxV INTO EXILE 

not know I had so manv finoers to smash, I did not 
know lying in freezing mud coukl be so uncomfort- 
able, I did not know that there ever lived so big a 
fool as Peter seemed to be. While the sounds of 
battle drifted over the moonlit, frosted fields, I lay 
under the car and battered away, thinking of the 
hot sunmier days in Long Island City, where I had 
seen the operation I was trying to perform done in 
the twinkling of an eye. IIow simple! how easy! 
and now how — hellish! 

Two hours and a half went by, in which we got 
the rounded knob at the apex of the triangle ahnost 
fitted into its socket; but it would not slip in, 
despite innumerable manipulations with levers, 
jacks, and hanmiers, and turning of wheels and 
straining the front axle. Then four soldiers came 
by whom Peter persuaded to help us, and with 
the combined strength of these the job finally was 
done. We had fifteen minutes left of the pre- 
scribed time. Slightly wounded soldiers were 
straggling back from the trenches. We had only 
to put back several important screws, that was all; 
but Peter discovered he had lost two of them. AVe 
had no extra ones, and the chance of finding them 
in that trampled mud by moonlight was nil. For 
the first time Peter swore; and it v.-as not at high 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 279 

heaven or me or the Bulgarians or even himself; it 
was at the two screws for letting him lose them. I 
could not help hut laugh, and we stuck in some wire, 
hoping it would hold. 

The four soldiers who had helped us Peter now 
insisted would he much offended if we did not give 
them a lift. I ol)jected that it would overload our 
tires, which I knew were weak, but he finally gained 
his point. I also hated to ride away from them 
when they had aided us. At last, just on the three- 
hour limit, we started. Within half a mile one of 
the tires blew out. I then ordered the soldiers to 
get out and Peter to drive on with the flat tire. 
This he did, for the battle was rolling on behind us 
and the camps along the road were breaking up in 
the wildest confusion, the tired oxen being forced 
once more to take the road. The countryside now 
became lighted with dozens of fires, where the re- 
treating soldiers burned haystacks, granaries, and 
supplies which they could not take. Now and then 
a peasant cottage would break into flames, and the 
farm stock ran about. 

In an hour we came to the town the doctor had 
spoken of. Our inquiries failed to bring any in- 
formation as to the whereabouts of him or the hospi- 
tal. I told Peter we would spend an hour search- 



280 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

ing for him, and that, while he did this, I would put 
on a new tire. The arrangement appealed to him, 
but at the end of the hour the only information we 
had was from the commandant, who said the doctor 
could not be found, and that he would doubtless go 
on with the hospital to Prizrend. So we started on 
without him. Our lamps were out of conmiission, 
but for two hours the moon afforded quite enough 
light, even though we had to run along the left, 
boggy fringe of the road because of the ox-cart 
trains. The ox-drivers were worse humored that 
night than I had ever seen them. To our con- 
stant horn and cry of "Desno! dcsnoT ("To the 
right"), they paid no attention whatever, purposely 
sticking in the middle of the road, leaving not 
enough room to pass on either side, and forcing us 
to accommodate our pace to theirs. We were con- 
tinually running on first speed on account of this 
and the heavy roads, and water boiled out of our 
radiator in a very short time. Then I w^ould de- 
scend, break the two-inch ice on the stream-filled 
ditches along the way and fill up with the freezing 
water, which instantly gave the tortured motor re- 
lief for the moment. 

Once when the drivers were particularly irritat- 
ing about not giving the road, Peter descended, like 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 281 

the wrath of heaven, and beat one of them soundly 
with a stick, screaming hair-raising threats mean- 
while. After this we fared somewhat better, for 
the news passed along that line far faster than we 
could travel. Once we were stopped by an old sol- 
dier who could hardly drag himself along. He was 
wounded in the leg and was faint from loss of 
blood. He asked a ride, and we put him in the 
ambulance, where now and then he moaned a little. 
Peter had brought me some bread, which I had not 
eaten, and it occurred to me this old fellow might 
be hungry. I do not believe he had had anything 
to eat for days. He seemed considerably "bucked 
up" afterward, and when we had to stop because of 
darkness, during the brief period between moonset 
and daylight, he left us, hobbling away we knew not 
where. 

At dawn I took the wheel, and almost at once we 
came up with what I always refer to as the "long 
Jwmmorra/' It was where the road leaves the 
plain and begins in gradual, tortuous ascents to 
wriggle up a narrow gorge. Of necessity the way 
is narrow, too, cut out of the canon's side, with an 
unspeakable surface. There is no balustrade on 
the outer edge; only the crumbling brink, unsafe 
for any heavy weight. This stretch is between 



282 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

twenty and thirty kilometers long, and without a 
single gap the whole was clogged with trains of 
carts. A more harrowing fifteen or twentj^ miles 
I hope never to drive. Even when the carts 
crowded against the inside bank, there was no room 
safely to avoid the dangerous edge. But seldom 
could my hoarse shouts of "Desno! desnoT re- 
peated unceasingly, persuade the drivers to go so 
close in, and so the car had to run on the narrowest 
margin — a margin that in some instances I could 
distinctly feel give beneath me. Peter slept 
through it all, loudly snoring in the back of the am- 
bulance. 

At last it ended in a steep ascent on which I 
passed the head of the procession, and climbed on a 
road that had now become very good to the top of 
the range. I had not realized we had climbed so 
high. In the morning sunlight I looked over a 
tremendous expanse of hill ranges and thickly 
wooded valleys, now brown and gold and blue with 
the tints of late autumn. Down the side of the 
mountain on which I was the road ran in endless 
leaps and turns on a regular, but steep, grade, nar- 
row, but with a perfect surface, as smooth as glass. 
I could see it gleam for miles and miles ahead until 
it was lost in the valley, only to rise again on the 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 283 

farther side, and lead over the next crest. Not that 
I stopped to take in this picture. It flashed on me 
in the brief time in which I ghmpsed it as, with 
power shut off, I ghded on top of the divide. I had 
shut off my power so as to begin the downward run 
as slowly as possible, for long before I had received 
the ambulance all the brakes had been worn out. 
Also, the reverse was gone, and the first speed so 
worn that I dared not use it as a brake. Up to 
that time this lack had inconvenienced me little, but 
as I looked at the long coast ahead, I knew that I 
should have to do better driving than I had ever 
done before if I got to the bottom. Of course I 
had virtually had no sleep for two days and nothing 
to eat except a little bread for twenty-four hours 
and was fagged with the train of misfortunes that 
had followed us, and especially with the drive just 
ended. I was really in a sort of coma, which kept 
me from realizing what driving that stretch without 
any brakes meant. Peter was still snoring. 

In two minutes we were going like an express- 
train, in three twice as fast, for we had hit the steep- 
est grade, and at its bottom was a short turn to the 
right, almost a switchback. It was there that 
t'eter got the joke on me. I did not drive that 
"Hirve ; it drove itself. What I did was reflex. All 



284 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

that I know is that, when headed hke a cannon-ball 
for the five-hundred-foot precipice, I waited until 
the road turned and then swung the wheel for all I 
was worth. I am confident that all four wheels left 
the earth; but we had made the curve, only to see 
another, sharp to the left, right ahead. Before I 
even realized there was another turn, we had gone 
straight ahead into a deep, muddy ditch, and the 
front wheels and radiator face were buried in a soft 
clay bank. It was a quicker stop than Peter had 
given us, and a more violent one. It threw Peter 
over my shoulder upon the radiator, and woke him 
up. I was whirled into the middle of the road. 
Neither was hurt, and we set to work inspecting the 
wi'cck. But there was no wreck. As I said before, 
I do not write advertisements, but when a car can 
stand up against Peter's and my ideas of sport, it 
does deserve honorable mention in the despatches. 
Nothing was injured except the triangle; that was 
buckled as before. Now by the deep contempt 
with which Peter looked at me, I realized how much 
he must have despised himself for running into that 
hole. 

I looked over the car, and saw that the rod was 
bent in only one place, and could be straightened 
with patience. I was sure it would take a long 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 287 

time, however, and I was afraid that Dr. May 
would leave Prizrend next morning. So when I 
was told it was only a five-hour walk to Prizrend, I 
took a small bag on my back, gave Peter two na- 
poleons to salve his feelings and hire helpers, and 
pushed on alone. 

It had been the unit's intention to go to Monastir 
by way of Albania from Prizrend. Once at Mon- 
astir, they could take the railway to Saloniki. This 
trip would require six or seven daj^s on horseback. 
The road had long been cut by the Bulgarians, but 
of course I did not know this. There were two al- 
ternative routes. Either they could go by horse- 
trails through Albania to Scutari, or they could go 
north by cart to Ipek, and from there cut across 
Montenegro by horse-trail to Androvitze, where a 
wagon-road led to Scutari via Podgoritze and Scu- 
tari Lake. When I set out to walk to Prizrend, I 
knew none of this. I only knew that they intended 
going to Monastir, and that, if they left Prizrend 
before I arrived, I could not overtake them; and 
although the road back to Mitrovitze had been cut 
so that I could not hope to return there, I still 
wished to deliver the letters to Dr. May. I was 
right in my supposition that they would be leaving 
next morning, for we did actually all leave to- 



288 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

gether then, though it was by the route to Ipek. 

I had been told that it was five hours to Prizrend. 
I began walking at eight o'clock, and at one I was 
told it was three hours to Prizrend. By this time 
I was completely fagged, mainly on account of 
sleep and hunger. At two I descended the last 
range of hills and began crossing a plain, dimty on 
the farther limit of which I saw for the first time 
the savage heights of the Albanian Alps. I could 
not see any sign of Prizrend, and could walk only 
about half as fast as formerly. I was thirsty, and 
left the road a minute to get a drink at a clear moun- 
tain stream. While standing on the bank, I heard 
a motor and, looking up, saw Peter flying by in the 
ambulance. If only I had been on the road! I 
resumed my march with many refugees, who were 
growing much more in evidence. Luck at last fa- 
vored me, for I soon spied the ambulance standing 
in the road, and, hurrying, I came up just as Peter, 
with two soldier comrades, was ready to set off. 
In the distance Prizrend showed indistinctly, 
crammed right against the mountains. 

In fifteen minutes we could see the surly old 
fortress on the hill above Prizrend, and soon neared 
the outskirts of the town. As I looked out, I had 



BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 289 

a curious sensation of being among familiar sur- 
roundings. It puzzled me a minute, and then I 
knew it was the refugees. We were in the thick of 
them again. By the tens of thousands they 
swarmed around Prizrend, ants in an ant-hill, bees 
in a hive, flies about a carcass. We were sub- 
merged in them, buffeted, hindered, stopped, amal- 
gamated with them. Swirling with them into the 
narrow maw of Prizrend, we became a part of them 
again. The old life had begun once more — the 
life it seemed to me I had led a thousand years in- 
stead of a few short weeks, the astounding, restless, 
tragic life of the living wave. 



CHAPTER IX 

PRIZREND 

ABOUT four o'clock in the afternoon I ar- 
rived at Prizrend, and at four next morn- 
ing I left it. It was not a long stay, but quite 
long enough to leave an indelible picture with me. 
The life of the retreat was always crammed full 
of incident, rich in striking or colorful detail, a 
pageant that day and night rolled over Serbia cost- 
ing thousands and thousands of lives and a nation's 
existence. To have marched with it was to see the 
most savage face of life and to become the familiar 
of death. To look back on it is to feel its dream-like 
quality seemingly extending over years and years. 
To write about it is to contend with a bewildering 
maze of narrative threads, the brightest of which it 
is not easy to choose; but Prizrend, in the sunset 
half-hour that I saw it and in the misty dawn as I 
left it, certainly deserves to be picked out of the 
tangle. 

I came there trailing the refugee masses, just 
ahead of the battle-storm, dangerously late. All 

290 



PRIZREND 291 

three Serbian armies were converging on the Al- 
banian and Montenegrin frontier between Prizrend 
and Ipek, some of them planning to take the route 
across Albania to Scutari, the rest to go through 
Montenegro by way of Ipek, Androvitze, and Pod- 
goritze to Scutari. The road to Monastir, as we 
learned at once, had been cut; the General Staff had 
already announced the evacuation of Prizrend, and 
were preparing to go to Scutari by the Albanian 
route. 

In time of peace Prizrend numbers about fifteen 
or twenty thousand inhabitants. It lies on the edge 
of a broad valley so close to the mountains that a 
good half of it clambers up a steep slope for hun- 
dreds of feet, and ends in the huge gray fortress 
which gives an appearance strangely reminiscent 
of Naples around San Martino. At the foot of 
this slope, through the center of the town, runs a 
swift mountain river, the quays on each side being 
lined with the spacious harems of the wealthier 
Turks. Farther up-stream these quays become 
grassy banks, and instead of old houses, are deep 
groves of sycamores. Where the main street 
strikes the river is an ancient stone bridge that con- 
sists of one incredibly long arch springing from 
massive piles of masonry on each side. 



292 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

When we came to the bridge, Peter and I were 
at a loss to know where to turn, when we spied one 
of the English nurses in the crowd. She had seen 
us, and was soon guiding us by a precarious road 
along the river-bank to a filthy alley a little way up 
which was the house which the ever-watchful Dr. 
Curcin had succeeded in getting for the mission. I 
was met with the news that the unit was leaving for 
Ipek the following morning. Dr. INIay was happy 
to get what slight good news I could bring of the 
wounded girl — they had expected her to die — and 
as all question of sending back the ambulance was 
settled, kindly invited me to travel along as one of 
the unit. This I was happy to do, and am frank 
to say that at this late date I do not know what I 
should have done otherwise; for although I had 
gold, food was not for sale. I made the journey as 
far as Rome with the unit, and can never forget 
the kindness shown me without exception by all the 
nurses and doctors. 

Soon after I arrived I met Admiral Troubridge 
again. He seemed worried; as near it, that is to 
say, as I ever saw him. Major Elliott had been 
sent with fiftj^ marines to go out by way of Mon- 
astir, and soon after he left the Admiral had got in- 
formation that the road had been cut by the Bui- 



PRIZREND 293 

garian forces. Since then he had had no word from 
his men; so whether they were cajjtured or not he 
did not know. As a matter of fact, they succeeded 
in getting out shortly before the enemy came. To 
add to the uncomfortable situation, Colonel Phil- 
lips had fallen ill, and was in no condition to make 
the trip across Albania to Scutari. What caused 
the Admiral most anxiety, however, was the condi- 
tion of the prisoners at Prizrend. He said that the 
Enghsh women must be got out of the town as soon 
as possible, next day at the latest. The Serbs had 
about fifty thousand prisoners in the old fortress, 
with insufficient guards, and more were coming in 
all the time. There was no food for them, and they 
were going mad with starvation. What he feared 
was that they would overpower their guards and 
deluge the town, looting, murdering, and burning. 
As he talked, I got a vivid picture of what fifty 
thousand haggard, ragged, freezing, starving men 
would do if turned loose in that place. I believe 
with him that this could easily have happened, for 
there were very many more prisoners than soldiers 
in the place, and with the wild confusion that pre- 
vailed they would meet with little organized resist- 
ance. Affairs certainly bore no pleasant aspect. 
The phenomenally good behavior of the prisoners 



294 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

of war will always remain something of a mystery 
to me. 

Beside the tremendous number of prisoners, 
there were more refugees gathered at Prizrend than 
at any other place during the retreat. At last the 
stream, which had arisen in the north along; the Save 



*& 



and the Danube and in the east along the Bulgarian 
frontier, and which had inundated the entire nation 
for two months, was dammed. The dam stretched 
away to north and south in a wild, beautiful tangle 
of shining peaks. When the refugees looked at 
the mountains ahead and heard the guns behind, 
they realized finally that Serbia was lost, aban- 
doned to three strong invaders, betrayed by three 
strong allies. This was the general sentiment. I 
heard it continually from civilians, soldiers, officers, 
and government officials. "AVhy did not Russia 
come? Where are the French? Has England 
forgotten us?" These questions were so common 
as to become a sort of national threnody. 

When I came, there were at least eighty thou- 
sand refugees here, with perhaps ten thousand more 
to come ahead of the moving armies. These 
hordes, combined with the fifty thousand prisoners, 
overwhelmed the little city. There was no food to 
be had for the masses. The Government was faced 



PRIZREND 295 

with three starving armies beside the one hundred 
and thirty thousand civihans and prisoners. In all 
that crowd I am sure not one had enough to eat, and 
thousands were facing actual starvation — thou- 
sands of women and children without any food, 
without any shelter at the close of November, and 
in the town congestion so great that contagious 
diseases were only a question of days. 

I find myself wondering what Prizrend is like 
to-day. The refugees had to remain there. To 
cross the mountains was an impossibility for fami- 
lies of women and children without food. After 
two months of untold hardship, at last they had to 
sit here and starve until the enemy came, only hop- 
ing that he might bring food. If he was unable 
to do so, Prizrend is indescribable now. It is about 
fifty kilometers from the railway, and in winter 
the road is terrible. Only by ox-cart can food be 
brought in, and the armies operating in Albania 
must be provisioned. It was not a bright outlook 
for the refugees. 

The streets of Prizrend are precipitous and tor- 
tuous, and down their whole length, from houses 
on each side, old grape-vines hang in graceful fes- 
toons, which in summer must cast the town in deli- 
cious shade. Now of course there was no foliage. 



296 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

only the serpentine stems under the forlorn net- 
work of which unnumbered thousands of starving, 
homeless peasants fouglit their way about, filling 
the streets with an unending stream day and night 
that crushed against the houses and swirled in rest- 
less pools around each dirty square. The red and 
white fezzes and gorgeous bloomers of the Turks; 
the Albanians, with their white skull-caps and great 
flaming sashes; the tall ^lontenegrins, with their 
gay jackets and tiny round hats; the people of the 
Sanjak, with glaring, pirate-like turbans; the Ser- 
bian peasant women, with their vari-colored, bril- 
liant stockings, multiform opanhi, exquisitely em- 
broidered short skirts and jackets, and bright 
head-clresses; the Serbian men in their brown and 
black homespun trousers, tight as to leg, volumi- 
nous as to seat; French majors and colonels and 
captains in dress uniform; English and Serbian 
officers tarnished and business-like; gendarmes in 
bright blue, with gold lace and braid; the royal 
guard, with red breeches and sky-blue tunics; the 
bluish gray of the Austrian prisoners; the grayish 
green of the Bulgarians, the greenish yellow of the 
Serbian soldiers — all flowed in barbaric masses of 
color through the streets of Prizrend, like Prishtina, 
but on a larger and more varied scale. Such street- 



PRIZREXr3 297 

scenes were one of the most remarkable aspects of 
an invasion unique in many ways. In no other 
circumstances could one ever see such a conglomera- 
tion of races in a setting that is still medieval. 

Up these streets in the dusk, playing havoc with 
the crowds, luxurious French limousines, shining 
American touring-cars, huge snorting motor-lorries 
nosed their way. The life of a whole nation had 
suddenly burst upon Prizrend, and everything was 
confused, turned topsy-turvy, business destroyed, 
and shops closed because, if opened, they were 
wrecked by the crush of too eager customers. Only 
the life of the harems moved on. The world might 
go to smash, but the Turk had his larders full, his 
money in gold, his own philosophy, and alone he 
walked the streets unperturbed. 

As night drew on, I stood in a little niche of the 
old bridge's balustrade. Lights were sprinkling 
the heights around the dark fortress, and the 
river's surface below was spread with ruddy and 
golden reflections from the latticed windows along 
the quays. There was the usual heterogeneous 
clamor of great crowds. Soldiers came toward the 
bridge shouting in Serbian and pushing a way 
through the throng. I was pushed hard against the 
wall as they opened a way before them. They were 



298 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

followed by some dim figures. A hush came over 
us. As the party came within the circle of light 
opposite me, I recognized for an instant the thin, 
keen features of King Peter. It was a curious set- 
ting for a king, and brought to mind a fleeting 
memory of the German em^Dcror reviewing his in- 
comparable army on the plain near JNIainz in 1913, 
a wonderful illustration, I thought, of cause and 
effect. The crowd began to heave and squirm 
again, restless as before. 

I had never happened to see the King before, but 
of course had heard and read the many wild con- 
flicting tales about his checkered life — whispers of 
a young man's Bohemian existence in Paris around 
the Cafe du Helder before he dreamed of being a 
king; stories of a care-free life at Geneva not un- 
mixed with plots; descriptions of him as an almost 
penurious, threadbare man in PetrogTad, choosing 
the less-frequented streets to bring his children to 
and from their royal school, where royal favor per- 
mitted them to go. These I remembered now, and 
wondered if he, too, were not lost in memories of 
beloved Paris, or feeling again the sweet breeze 
that on summer evenings sweeps in from Lake 
Leman, or walking with the young princes along 
the quiet streets of Petrograd. Certainly his ex- 



PRIZREND 299 

pression was one of brooding, and well it might be, 
for this was his last day on the soil of his kingdom. 
The following morning he plunged into Albania, 
and before reaching Scutari had to be carried on the 
backs of his soldiers. 

Xot one tenth of the refugees could get shelter 
in the town. Broad camps stretched about the 
place, filling the numerous Turkish cemeteries. A 
Turkish cemetery is the most desolate thing in the 
world. They plant their dead — and how innumer- 
able their dead seem ! — on any barren space that lies 
near at hand, for they always live in the midst of 
their departed. They stick up rough-hewn slabs 
of stone, which seem never to fall completely, but 
only to sag from the perpendicular, adding much to 
the chaotic ensemble. Then they seem promptly 
to forget the graves forever. In space of time 
these sink, leaving depressions which, when the 
wind is right, are partly sheltered by the grave- 
stones. Filled with hay, they are not bad couches 
— for a refugee. Now all about Prizrend in the 
November dusk camp-fires burned brightly amid 
the tipsy gravestones, and hundreds of inert forms 
were stretched beside them on the grave. A weird 
sight, those living cities of the dead, but only in 
retrospection strange. For there is a point which 



300 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

people sometimes reach when nothing is strange 
but peace and happiness, and nothing natural but 
the instinct to exist. Prizrend's self-invited guests 
had reached it. 



CHAPTER X 

THE AEMY THAT CANNOT DIE 

IN that future for which all Europe hopes, when 
stability and peace shall have come to the Bal- 
kans, Serbia will doubtless become a tourist's 
playground such as is the Midi or Switzerland. 
Then the road from Prizrend to Ipek will be as 
famous as the Corniche Road or the Briinig Pass. 
It winds along broad, fertile valleys, skirting the 
northern Albanian Alps. There are old and very 
beautiful arched stone bridges, carrying it across 
canons of savage magnificence. The finest of these 
is the thin half-circle of masonry that marks the 
border between Montenegro and Serbia. At 
Jakova it breaks into narrow Eastern streets full 
of the yet unspoiled glamour of the Orient, and 
winds about the crumbling Turkish fortifications 
that loom upon the grassy plain like the battlements 
of Aigues-Mortes. Then it dips into the foot-hills, 
and leads after a time to the mouth of a deep and 
narrow valley two kilometers up which, surrounded 
by crag-tipped heights and dark forests of pines, 

301 



302 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

is a large monastery with a fourteenth-century 
church, the interior of which is still covered with 
unrestored frescos of the period. Its final stage 
is straight over another plain to Ipek, lying at the 
foot of roadless mountains. The peaks that over- 
shadow it are majestic as few mountains are, but to 
us who as refugees came that way, they spelled only 
hardship, and the road itself was very bad. 

If we had known at INIitrovitze that the way to 
INIonastir was cut, we should not have gone to Priz- 
rend at all, but should have gone directly from 
INIitrovitze to Ipek, a distance of only twenty-five 
kilometers. As it was, the march to Prizrend had 
required four days, and now, reversing our direc- 
tion, the march from there to Ipek would require 
two more, although on ordinary roads, in an auto- 
mobile, it could be done in two hours. Thus five 
days' unnecessary march were made in describing 
the two legs of a triangle, the base of which laj^ on 
the line between INIitrovitze and Ipek. Having 
come to Prizrend, however, we chose the Ipek route 
to Scutari rather than the one across Albania, be- 
cause the latter had been rendered exceedingly un- 
safe by the wild native tribesmen, who were rising 
everywhere and attacking all parties not strong 
enough to offer formidable resistance. Had the 




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King Poter of Serbia 









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rnzrcml I'roiii the river bank 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE .'305 

refugees at Prizrend wished to do so, tliey eould 
have made the additional two days' march to Ipek, 
but comparatively few of them did. Having been 
driven to a realization of the hopelessness of their 
situation, they decided that it was just as well to 
starve at Prizrend as farther along. 

The total absence of news or reliable information 
of any sort, which had brought us so far out of our 
way, was one of the striking things of the retreat. 
Even the army was for the most part ignorant of 
what was taking place at other points, so great was 
tlie problem of communication in the general con- 
fusion. There was a field wireless or two which did 
good work interrupting German messages, and 
couriers were riding this way and that, but the 
rumors which came to the masses were of the wild- 
est character and always of rosy burden — a half 
million Russians through Rumania, a quarter mil- 
lion troops of the Allies from Saloniki, and the rail- 
way freed again. We heard that Germany was 
withdrawing her troops to protect her borders from 
the French, who had driven them beyond the 
Rhine. No one believed these stories; all repeated 
them with additions. 

Always one moved blindly with the throng, itself 
a blind leader, knowing nothing for certain excejit 



306 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

the never-ceasing guns behind. The fortunate 
people who came out early met little of this chaos, 
and, arriving at Prizrend, made the journey to 
Monastir before the cold set in, if not in comfort, 
at least with a fair degree of safety. The members 
of the American Sanitary Commission were able 
to do this, as well as a good many Russian and 
French nurses. INIost of the English sisters ar- 
rived too late, and made the trip to Scutari either 
through Albania or jMontenegro. Those who came 
out late saw the real retreat. The far more for- 
tunate earlier ones heard only the distant rum- 
blings. 

Early in a foggy dawn we passed through the 
streets of Prizrend, still crowded with the abnormal 
life that all night had not ceased to stir, and got out 
upon the road among those dreary graveyards, now 
turned into huge bivouacs. Just outside the town 
two automobiles passed us filled with queer, furiy 
creatures who were hardly recognizable as men. 
Hung all over the cars were rucksacks, bales, and 
bags, all tightly stuffed and quite obviously in- 
tended to be transported on pack-horses. Each 
figure carried a rifle, which made him look like a 
trained bear in a circus. Cheery French chatter 
came to our ears as they passed, and, inquiring, we 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 307 

learned that they were a party of aviators and me- 
chanics starting on the Alhanian road to Scutari. 
They would be able to go only a few kilometers in 
the cars, which they would then bum and take to 
pack-horses. The entire party would number 
about fifty, all well armed. I found myself wish- 
ing to be with them. 

The march to Jakova was one of the longest we 
ever made in a single day. Part of the caravan, 
indeed, did not go all of the way, but camped by 
the roadside and came on the next morning. It 
was a beautiful day, full of sunshine, and cold 
enough to make walking a pleasure. Strange as 
it may seem, tramping was really becoming pleas- 
ant to many of the nurses. They were now experts 
at it. They had learned the steady gait that does 
not tire, and they found the deep sleep that is 
bought only by long hours of hard exercise. The 
sparkling air and savage mountains delighted them, 
and the knowledge that they were playing a part in 
the wildest drama even these old, romantic lands 
had ever known added much to their pleasure. So 
the hunger and cold and exhaustion, even the mul- 
tiple tragedies around them were, to a degree, com- 
pensated for. "I should love to tramp forever 
and ever," they would say after a cold night in the 



308 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

open, when the warming dawn brought a nameless 
dehght just because it was dawn and warm. We 
know they are heroines, but they would say they 
were merely happy tramps. Not only was the 
march to Jakova one of the finest because of the 
mountains that always watched over us, but its 
pleasure was undisturbed by many refugees. Few 
were traveling the road with us. 

A good many soldiers were on the road, however, 
and our ambulance had an exciting episode with 
one of them. At Prizrend the car had been turned 
over to Mr. Boone, a fine English boy of scarcely 
eighteen who had come out with the Stobart unit 
and who, although ill most of the time, showed an 
unfailing cheerfulness and good humor that threw 
him into glaring contrast with most of his country- 
men whom it was my fate to meet in Serbia. If I 
had never seen any Englishmen except those who 
dumped themselves, or were dumped, on that un- 
happy land, I would conclude without difficulty 
that the percentage of the species we know as men 
among them is so small as to be negligible. For- 
tunately, it was possible to realize early that Serbia 
had been made the military and diplomatic scrap- 
heap of England and France, and that the speci- 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 309 

mens to be found there were no more to be taken as 
representatives of those two great nations than the 
contents of an ash-can can be held to be the true 
symbol of the mansion from which it comes. 
Wholesale criticisms are seldom in good taste and 
rarely true. If here and in other portions of this 
book the opinions expressed seem too sweeping, 
the only apology is that they never pretend to a 
wider experience than was actually the case, and 
are not founded on any personal opinion of what 
may or may not be wise or stupid, but are rather 
the outcome of an indignation aroused on occasions 
too numerous to enumerate. I speak of the unre- 
strained and oft-repeated expressions of mean, ly- 
ing, and contemptible sentiments from men sent out 
to help Serbia. The wide-flung declaration of 
facts, obviously false, the cynical, egotistical criti- 
cisms of the nation which was dying through the 
fault of these critics' own nations; the ill-timed, 
vulgar, and abominable mouthings of persons 
whose business it was to fight and keep their mouths 
shut, but who showed no perceptible liking for do- 
ing either; and finally the cold heartlessness of an 
English journalist whose only apparent conception 
of a country's crucifixion seemed to be that it was 



310 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

a God-sent opportunity for him to spread pictur- 
esque slanders, make it impossible for me to keep 
such paragraphs as this out of my story. 

In perhaps the widest circulated of our weeklies 
an article appeared entitled "The Difficult Truth 
about Serbia." It is a line reading. xVboiit no 
country, in my knowledge, is it more difficult to get 
the truth. The truth about Serbia is, indeed, diffi- 
cult to learn, but a pleasure in these days to tell. 
It is a truth at which, in a stay of less than a month, 
even the perspicacity of the woman journalist who 
wrote the article could not hope to arrive. Filth 
is no criterion by which to judge nations who have 
faced what the Balkan nations have. It is like 
criticizing ^lilton for the lack of a manicurist. To 
say that of late years Serbia has had time to re- 
cover from the effects of centuries of degradation is, 
through ignorance or design, to ignore many things. 
With the easy grace characteristic of a certain type 
of feminine mind the author of that article leaps 
over the economic isolation of Serbia, the deadly 
trade wars with Austria, soars over the most signifi- 
cant factors in the growth of nations, knocking 
do-wn not a single fact. You cannot learn a nation 
in a WTck. You cannot measure the potentialities 
of a people by their lack of smart fiacres or the 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 311 

abundance of vermin in their inns any nnore than 
you can fairly revile them because, with world 
dramas on every side, as yet the cinematograph has 
failed to bring them the "Perils of Pauline." After 
a stay of a fortnight you cannot convincingly im- 
pugn the honor, kindness, pride, and hospitality 
of a people in whom for a generation English, 
American, French, and German travel-writers have 
praised these qualities almost without exception. 
When you attempt to do such things you become to 
the informed reader stupid or laughable, but to the 
unsusjjccting millions pernicious. 

The right to this opinion I do not base upon as 
intimate a knowledge as I could desire, but it is 
given on at least two months' extensive travel over 
the country and close association with all classes, 
on four additional months of "root-hog-or-die" ex- 
istence with the soldiers of the line, with their offi- 
cers, with their martyred wives and children, and 
finally on the illuminating sight of Serbia in the 
moment of her death, that moment which on the 
road to Ipek we were fast approaching. The Serb 
is not an angel, frequently he is not clean, but, 
thank Heaven ! he is a man. 

All of which is by way of digression. Boone was 
bounding along in the ambulance alone except for 



312 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

two wounded soldiers that he had picked up, and 
who, with the supphes he had to carry, were all the 
car would hold. Some slight trouble forced him 
to stop, and before he could start again a Serbian 
petty officer, who had called to him in French a 
short time before, ordering him to stop, came up. 
He wasted no words, but harshly ordered Boone to 
give him a place in the car. Boone refused to do 
this, showing him the wounded soldiers. When he 
saw the soldiers, the young brute became furious, 
and ordered Boone to throw them out and to take 
him. Boone again refused to obey the order. 
Then the officer di-ew his automatic and pressed it 
against Boone's temple, repeating the demand. 
Boone still refused to throw out the wounded men, 
but they had seen the situation, and of their own 
accord got out. The officer then forced the Eng- 
lish boy to get in and drive him on, holding the pis- 
tol to his head all the time. Finally a tire blew out, 
much to Boone's relief, and as repairing it required 
some time the officer went away swearing. Such 
incidents as this were inevitable at such a time. 
Examples of brutality are not lacking in any army 
anywhere. When I read wild tales of Serbian sol- 
diers having mutinied, murdered their officers, and 
looted the houses of their countrymen, I cannot but 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 3i3 

think they have their foundation in more or less 
isolated crimes. The splendid dignity, the great 
restraint, and the almost perfect behavior of the sol- 
diers and civilians after their Government had 
crumbled caused frequent comment among the 
foreigners making the retreat. Had the gentle- 
man who described Krushevats as dead drunk seen 
this episode, the world might have been treated to 
an account of how the Serbian officers in a delirium 
of fear turned on the Red Cross workers, and we at 
home would have believed it! 

At about three in the afternoon those of us in the 
front party crossed over the bridge which marks 
the boundary between Serbia and Montenegro. 
It was dusk when we came to Jakova, and almost 
an hour later before we found a resting-place in a 
Turkish school-room. Jakova furnished a good 
illustration of the isolation that still exists in this 
region. Thirty kilometers away was the inferno of 
Prizrend. At Jakova, the day we arrived, one 
would not have known that there was such a thing 
as war. Silver money could be easily obtained, and 
food was for sale. Next morning I bought quanti- 
ties of cigarettes, and because we had had no sugar 
for some time, a store of raisins and sticky "Turkish 
Delight." But with us came the first sign of the 



314 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

deluge, and on the second day after we arrived 
enough refugees and soldiers had come to give the 
inhabitants a sense of uneasiness, so that when I 
went out to shop on this day, I found conditions 
much changed. In vain I hunted for more "Turk- 
ish Delight" and cigarettes. They and nearly 
every other article had disappeared. I did not be- 
lieve the stock had been sold out so quickly, and was 
puzzled. 

Finally in the window of a little shop I saw an 
empty box that had without doubt contained the 
coveted sweet. I went in and directed the ancient 
Turk's attention to it, mentioning divers moneys. 
He shook his head stolidly. I repeated the opera- 
tion, although I was confident he had understood 
the first time, but with no more success. Then I 
had an inspiration. At college I had learned a 
disgusting trick, which consisted of smacking the 
lips and rubbing the stomach in unison, a perform- 
ance that made up in buffoonery what it lacked in 
elegance. I now had recourse to this, nodding 
meanwhile at the empty box. At first the good 
Moslem brother looked startled, as if I should not 
be loose; then over the wrinkled, inscrutable pie- 
plate that he called his face a grin flickered, and 
diving into a back room, he brought half a dozen 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 315 

boxes and sold them to me, thus proving that not 
everything learned at college is useless. The shop- 
keepers had begun to hoard, taking all tempting ar- 
ticles out of the sight of the soldiers, who might not 
prove overscrupulous about a little raid. 

I continued my search for cigarettes. There 
were any number of tobacco shops where on the 
previous day these could be had, but now nothing 
but smoking tobacco of a very inferior grade was 
for sale. I could think of no vaudeville stunt cal- 
culated to soften the dealers' hearts. Disconso- 
lately I looked into a tobacco-shop window when a 
Turkish gamin of ten came by, puffing a cigarette 
as large as his two fingers. He stopped and looked 
at me as I looked at the empty window. I patted 
him on the head, told him in English he should not 
use tobacco, pointed to his cigarette, and held up 
five dinars. He promptly led me around a corner, 
winked, and disappeared. Soon he was back with 
two hundred excellent cigarettes. I pocketed 
them, and held up five more dinars. Again I re- 
ceived two hundred, and he pocketed the ten dinars. 
My conscience now suggests that in the evening 
when papa Turk came home to his harem, he may 
have worn out an embroidered velvet slipper caress- 
ing the anatomy of my sly friend, but I wager he 



316 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

saw nothing of the ten dinars. Dans la guerre 
co7iime dans la guerre! 

At Jakova I sold one pair of the oxen I had 
bought about six weeks before at Alexandrovats. 
They had come all that distance through terrible 
hardships and were much weakened ; but I received 
thirty dinars more than I had paid for them, and I 
sold them to a Turk! All things considered, it 
was the greatest financial stroke I ever performed. 
One day's journey away was Ipek, where all the 
oxen would have to be abandoned. There a few 
days later I gave the other and larger pair to Ticho- 
mir, who sold them for eighty dinars. Our noble 
chariot was burned to warm his lazy limbs. 

We left Jakova in the beginning of our second 
snow-storm; but it was not so cold as on the Plain 
of Kossovo, and there was no wind. Also the way 
was not so encumbered with refugees, though full 
of the arm3^ The fall was exceedingly heavy, and 
delayed us some, so that it was nearly dark when we 
turned up the canon to seek refuge in the monastery 
where Dr. Curcin had made arrangements for the 
unit to stay, the journey on to Ipek requiring only 
about three hours. For thirty min«utes we fol- 
lowed a makeshift road between ever-heightening 
mountains. The creaking and rumbling of our 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 319 

carts was the only sound in the snow-laden forest. 
Far ahead we saw the great building, with hundreds 
of ruddy windows sending rays of light down the 
valley. It looked cheerful enough, and even had 
something of a festive air, which made me suddenly 
remember that it was Thanksgiving day. Being 
the only American in the party, I had quite forgot- 
ten this occasion. When we floundered up to it, we 
found the great quadrangular building as white as 
an Eskimo hut, and entering by a high arched por- 
tal we plowed about the extensive courtyard, deep 
in great snow-drifts. On the eastern side of the 
court stood the ancient church, streaming light 
from the windows illuminating in patches its rich 
fa9ade of colored marbles, while the numerous gar- 
goyles in the shadows above had become terrible 
pale shapes that grinned and writhed, strained and 
snarled, in the gathering night. 

No doubt they have seen many strange sights, 
these odd, old creatures, which were white with 
the whiteness of new marble when the Serbia of 
ancient days was ground to death under the Turk- 
ish heel, from which the rest of Europe had only 
with great difficulty been delivered by a valiant 
Pole under the very walls of Vienna. They had 
looked on while for five centuries a race, persecuted 



320 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

with every conceivable form of atrocity and oppres- 
sion, had kept alive the dream of the Southern Slav, 
and in times so recent that to them it must have 
seemed but yesterday they saw that dream come to 
flower in a little nation which, whatever its faults, 
is certainly as brave and as unfortunate as any na- 
tion ever was. Four years ago they saw it redeem 
a large stretch of territory from its ancient enemy, 
and then, bullied by a treacherous ally, turn and 
inflict a stinging defeat upon her. They saw this 
new-born nation live through those breathless days 
of 1914, when the whole world watched her. They 
saw her confronted with demands more humiliat- 
ing than any free nation had ever been called 
upon to accept, and they saw her make broader 
concessions than any free nation had ever done 
before, but to no purpose. Then they saw her 
invaded by an army three times the strength of 
her own, they saw her desperate and suddenly, be- 
fore the world realized, gloriously victorious under 
General ^lishich's brilliant leadership, but wounded 
and exhausted, so that disease and famine spread 
over her for six months, creating a situation terrible 
enough to call the whole friendly and neutral world 
to her aid. That Thanksgiving night they were 
witnessing the passing of a shattered, starving 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 321 

army, the plight of a hopeless, starving people, and 
now without doubt Bulgarian officers pass to and 
fro beneath them. 

It seems impossible for one who saw it to speak 
or write coldly about this period of the retreat. It 
was the death moment. After it the flight over the 
mountains seemed merely the instinctive departure 
of men who for the most part did not care whether 
they lived or died. Two or three days later all 
three armies would be in Ipek, except several thou- 
sand who already had gone into Albania from Priz- 
rend. The road having been cut, part of the sec- 
ond army was coming across country, without any 
roads at all, over frozen plains and snow-covered 
hills, fording icy streams every few miles, dragging 
their cannon and ammunition with them. The 
three field commanders would soon hold their coun- 
cil in Ipek. King Peter, the crown prince, Gen- 
eral Putnik, and the general staff were already on 
their way to Scutari. The Allies had failed her; 
Serbia was lost. 

Throughout the long night carts struggled up to 
the monastery, and men bearing stretchers filed in. 
They carried Serbian officers, many wounded, some 
dead from cold and the cruel exhaustion of the 
carts. All night long the queer monastery boys, 



322 WITH SKIUUA INTO EXILE 

in their tight, bright-red trousers and abbreviated 
blue jackets, ran up and down the long corridors 
with flaring lights, while the brown, silent monks 
stole to and t'ro. There were cries and groans and 
curses, and every hour chimes in the old tower. It 
was bitter cold. A more grotesque night 1 never 
expect to spend. 

No, one cannot write cahnly of Ipek then. No 
matter where one's sympathies may lie in this war 
that has divided the world, if one knows patriotism 
and has any admiration for pure grit, that last 
camp of the Serbian army, already on foreign soil, 
could call forth nothing but the deepest feeling. 

We came to Ipek after two days' delay at the 
monastery, which allowed the weaker of the part)'^ 
to regain a little of their strength. It was a great 
question at this time whether we should ever get to 
Ipek, or, at any rate, out of it, before the Germans 
came. ISIitrovitze had been in their hands for sev- 
eral days, and ^litrovitze was distant only twenty- 
five kilometers. A part of this way the invaders 
had already come, and we did not know whether 
they would be opposed by the Serbs or not. But it 
is not easy to arrange quickly at such a time for a 
party of forty women and the necessary attendants, 
guides, guards, and food to cross the mountains of 



THE ARMY THAT CANXOT DIE .323 

Montenegro. Dr. Curcin and some Serbs had gone 
ahead to make such arrangements as were possible. 
On the second day we started for the town. As 
soon as we reached the canon's mouth and turned 
into the main road, the coldest wind I harl ever felt 
struck us full in the face as it swept off the bleak, 
Alpine peaks behind Ipek and raced unbroken 
across the icy plain. In crossing this plain we un- 
doubtedly suffered more l^itterly from the cold than 
anywhere else on the whole retreat. Nor was it 
cheerful to think that, if we were freezing on this 
plain, what would happen when we took the two- 
foot trail across the summits of those mountains, 
now so blinding in the bright sunshine that we could 
scarcely look at them. I could see great clouds of 
driven snow swirling around those lofty ice-fields, 
just as on any clear day they may be seen blurring 
the summit of Mont Blanc and showing the violence 
of the gales. Perhaps it was foolish, certainly it 
was no compliment to the oncoming Teutons, that 
in a choice between them and the cruel desolation of 
those vast, trackless wastes the women of England 
unanimously chose the latter. But I do not think 
it was really fear of the invader at all. In the first 
place, as far as we could learn, there had been no 
reason to fear the Teutonic invaders in Serbia. I 



324 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

say as far as we could learn, for we were ahead of 
the army, and hence would naturally not come in 
contact with atrocities, if any had been committed. 
But according to Admiral Troubridge, Colonel 
Phillips, and Serbians with whom I talked, they 
had no reason to believe that the Germans were not 
following a humane policy in Serbia. We heard 
that on entering Belgrade — what was left of Bel- 
grade — the}^ sealed the houses which had been left 
intact, and disturbed nothing except to take all the 
brass, copper, and bronze which they found. Since 
coming out of Serbia I have heard many seemingly 
authentic stories of barbarities committed there by 
the Teutons and by the Bulgarians, but from per- 
sonal experience I know only what I have stated. 

I think it was the strong aversion the nurses felt 
at the possibility of having to nurse back to fitness 
for the trenches the men whom their fathers and 
brothers were fighting that was the deciding factor 
in their decision to go over the mountains. To see 
any live thing suffering made these women almost 
wild unless they could do something to relieve it; 
and then it seemed to me that thej^ were rather 
jubilant, their professional feeling drowning every- 
thing else. A prisoner never failed to draw sym- 
pathy from them, but when it came to being pris- 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 325 

oners themselves and nursing men who would be 
sent back to fight — well, the unknown, icy trails 
were preferable, even though they were ragged and 
starved, footsore and weary. 

The wind that nearly took us off our feet and 
whistled through our clothing, chilling us to the 
bone, also removed the light layer of feathery snow 
that lay under foot, and uncovered a solid expanse 
of slippery ice on which every moment animals and 
people lost their balance and fell heavily. It was 
like a skating-lesson. At times it was impossible 
to move at all against the wind with such insecure 
footing, and many ox-cai*ts stood immovable in the 
road, with both oxen vainly trying to rise. 

In the sheltered canon we had met wild, little 
Gipsy boys who did a brisk trade in wormy apples 
about the size of lemons, wormy chestnuts, and 
hard, green, little pears. Lead a precarious exist- 
ence out of tin cans for weeks, and see if you would 
not welcome such fruit as this. We did abun- 
dantly. But those pears were dum-dum bullets. 
They raised all their mischief inside, and, combined 
with many a chill among us, was many a stomach- 
ache of the real, near-fatal, small-boy variety. At 
last with eyes that smarted and wept under freez- 
ing slaps of the wind, we saw Ipek splotching the 



326 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

arid, white waste at the base of the mountains, a 
stragghng, irreguhir, crinison-and-yellow blot on 
the snow. It looked as if a Titan had dropped a 
titanic tomato of titanic over-ripeness. I do not 
love Ipek, but I shall be dust and ashes before I 
forget it. 

Of course we did not have so many refugees to 
make life terrible, but here it was the army that 
took the star role in our masque of horror. There 
were just enough civilians to make the to^^^l really 
congested. Around it on the ice and snow the 
army camped, or, rather, lay down in the frosty 
open, nursed its wounded, and took stock of its 
dead. When I saw the Serbian soldiers at Ipek I 
said to myself that I had seen the hardiest men on 
earth reduced to the furthest limit of their endur- 
ance. Again, like the quick-trip journalists, I was 
very ignorant and foolish. Had a pressing con- 
tract to write up the court etiquette of Timbuctoo 
in 1776 called me hurriedly away at the moment, 
in all good faith I would have cabled any newspaper 
that had been unfortunate enough to retain me that 
the Serbian army had reached the end of its rope, 
was merely scratching around in the snows of Ipek 
for a place in which to die, and would never get ten 
miles over the mountains toward Scutari. I might 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 329 

have padded this information with more or less 
veracious details of hungry soldiers eating live oxen 
on the half-shell, and fastidious officers living on 
consomme made from expensive Russian boots, and 
in all probability I would have established myself 
as an authority on Serbia. 

As a matter of fact, two war correspondents, 
one English and one American, did find time and 
inspiration to make part of the retreat. They took 
the route through Albania to Scutari and thence to 
Rome. They were the first two; I happened to 
be the third curiosity to arrive in the Eternal City 
from the great retreat. As such, Ambassador 
Page questioned me extensively, with his habitual 
Southern courtesy. Among other things, he asked 
how many Serbian soldiers came through. When 
I replied, not less than one hundred thousand, he 
laughed politely, but very heartily. It was impos- 
sible ; it could not be ; besides, the two eminent cor- 
respondents differed radically from me. One said 
about thirty, and the other about forty thousand, 
had escaped. Mr. Page was inclined to split the 
difference at thirty-five thousand. Last week His 
Highness Alexander, Prince Regent, announced 
that one hundred and fifty thousand Serbs were 
now completely reorganized, reequipped, and suffi- 



330 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

ciently rested to fight again on any battle-field. 
Sixteen thousand of these came out by way of Sa- 
loniki, the rest through Albania and JNIontenegro. 
So much for the quick-fire reporters. Despite 
their manifest shortcomings, what would we do 
without them? 

The army that huddled around the cheerless 
town of Ipek really did not seem to have enough 
reserve strength to make any further exertion. I 
knew, as I looked at the drab, bedraggled groups 
clustering about fires that their transport-wagons 
fed, that these men were doomed to death or cap- 
ture at Ipek. Three weeks later, watching the 
same men crawl into Scutari, I knew that I had 
been mistaken previously, but that, unless Scutari 
was safe for months and ample food and clothing 
came, they would die or surrender there. Further 
mountain retreating for that mechanical mass, 
scarcely instinct with life, was impossible. Again 
I would have cabled lies to my paper. I was igno- 
rant again. They did not get rest at Scutari nor at 
San Giovanni di Medua, but they made the inde- 
scribable march to Durazzo on rations that were 
criminally short, hundreds and hundreds perishing 
by the roadside, and then they fell into boats, and 
only on the islands of the Adriatic and in southern 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 331 

Italy did they find food and rest. Now, after 
scarcely two months, comes the amazing announce- 
ment that they are ready and eager for the battle 
again I Such were the men I saw evacuating the 
hospitals, such were the men I saw crowding the 
long refugee-trains in indescribable discomfort, 
such were the men I saw, wounded and bleeding, 
tramping the muddy roads through the wilderness ; 
such were they whom I saw freezing and starving 
around Ipek, who died by the hundreds there and 
by the thousands in the mountains ; such were they 
who, when they could have surrendered with bet- 
terment to themselves, and dishonor for their coun- 
try, did not, but made a retreat as brave and as 
glorious as any victory of this or any other war — a 
retreat that dims the flight from Moscow in suf- 
fering. Such is the Serbian army, the army that 
cannot die. 

The economic life of Ipek was interesting. 
Splendid oxen could be bought here for ten or fif- 
teen dollars a pair, their former price being about 
one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The food 
situation was acute, but not so bad as at Prizrend. 
However, the supply, such as it was, was purely 
temporary, and before I left had been completely 
exhausted. The price of boots was a phenomenon. 



332 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

Since the first day of the retreat footgear had sold 
at constantly increasing prices, until the amount 
paid for a pair of boots was fabulous, amounting to 
sixty or seventy dollars. In the streets of Ipek 
there were quantities of excellent Russian boots for 
sale at four or five dollars, the normal price of these 
in Serbia being about twenty dollars. Government 
magazines had been thrown open to the soldiers, 
and many of those who happened to be more or less 
decently shod preferred to sell. So the bottom 
dropped out of the boot market. Bread, however, 
was at the same famine prices that had prevailed 
before. I saw a pound loaf sell for eight dollars. 

The council between the three generals was on. 
All communication with the General Staff was cut 
off. It devolved upon the field-commanders to de- 
cide upon the final abandonment of Serbia. Their 
conference lasted two days, and, according to all 
reports, was stormy. General Mishich was for an 
offensive even at that date. With those emaciated 
regiments out there in the frozen fields, killing their 
transport-beasts for food, burning their transport- 
wagons for fuel, and having enough of neither, with 
most of his ammunition gone, together with a great 
part of the very insufficient artillery which the army 
had possessed, he still felt that there was a chance, 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 333 

and that is all that is necessary for the Serbian sol- 
dier. They are not fools, they do not die need- 
lessly, as the Montenegrins are popularly reported 
to do, but if there is a chance life counts nothing to 
them. During the months that I lived with them, 
slept with them on the ground, ate their bread, saw 
their battle-lines, I learned this beyond all else. 
Soldier for soldier, I believe them to be the best 
fighters in the world. Most soldiers are brave 
men; the Serb is also a marvelous stoic, a rare op- 
timist, and built of steel. But the odds there were 
too great. The other two generals favored the 
course which was carried out with a very remarka- 
ble degree of success — a general retreat through the 
mountains with as many of the smaller guns and as 
much ammunition as possible. So the evacuation 
of Ipek was announced. 

The next morning loud explosions were heard at 
one end of the town. The purchase of horses was 
keeping us in Ipek, and I found myself with noth- 
ing to do, so, with my camera, I wandered toward 
the explosions. At the edge of the town, where the 
highway that was a skating-rink led out, a lot of 
field-guns were finishing their short, but checkered, 
career. They were just about obsolete and worn 
out, anyway. Fate had not been very kind to them. 



334 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

and few vacations had been theirs since, new and 
efficient, they had been turned on the Turks in 

1912 with a result too well-known to recall. In 

1913 they had been reversed, and had spoken suc- 
cessfully the Serbs' opinion of the Bulgarians. In 

191 4 they blew Austria's cumbersome legions to 
shreds, and stuck up a "Keep off" sign over Serbia 
that Austria did not feel justified in disregarding 
until Germany and Bulgaria could aid her. After 
that they had been dragged and carried the length 
of Old Serbia until fate had concentrated them in 
groups of two or three along the Ipek road. 

The men who were smashing their breeches or 
blowing up their carriages looked as if they hated 
themselves. The army lined tlie road to watch. 
The only sounds were the ringing sledges and the 
detonations of the explosions. As I photogra])hed 
some of those yet untouched, it came to me rather 
forcibly that this was the first time I had ever seen 
Serbian soldiers work without laughter and song. 

A gunner whose gun I had photographed came 
up to me antl in broken German asked if I would 
send him a photograph. I took out my note-book 
and pencil and told him to write his address. He 
hesitated. He had forgotten something; he had no 
address any more. He had nothing but that gun. 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIK ;W5 

which he had worked since 1012. In a few minutes 
he would not have that. We could hear plainly the 
enemy fighting with the rear-guard out toward 
Mitrovitze. The man began to curse, and war was 
the object of his curses. Again I was forcibly im- 
pressed; it was the first time I had ever heard a 
Serb curse war, though all had lamented it. Also 
for the first time I was seeing a Serbian man weep. 
I could hardly believe it. Standing there with his 
back to the mountains and his face turned toward 
the enemy, shaking with the cold, the man, for a 
Serb, went to pieces: four tears rolled down his 
cheeks. Turning to me, he said, "America dohra, 
dohra, dohra, dohra' ("America good, good, good, 
good"). Then they came and knocked his gun to 
pieces. Most forcibly of all there came to me the 
conception of a new sort of value in artillery — a 
value that is not strictly military, nor particularly 
effected by the model or life of a gun. 

In Ipek there were many automobiles — motor- 
lorries, limousines, and touring-cars. They were 
drawn up around the public squares in imposing 
rows. Apparently from habit the chauffeurs pot- 
tered about them, polishing the plate-glass and 
nickel and cleaning the engines. But when evacu- 
ation was announced they drove a httle way out of 



336 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

the town. Some of them had brought hand-gre- 
nades, and leaving the engines running, they hfted 
up the hoods, struck the percussion-caps of the 
bombs, which they dropped beside the cyhnders, 
and then ran. A Serbian grenade explodes in from 
seven to ten seconds after the cap is struck, so that 
one could not get very far before the racing motor 
was blown to scrap-iron. Fire usually consumed 
the body. Other chauffeurs saturated their cars 
with petrol and set them on fire. In the case of 
hmousines this was spectacular. With all the up- 
holstery soaked well with benzine, and everything 
closed tight except a small crack in one window 
through which the match was thrown, the luxurious 
cars became roaring furnaces for a minute, and then 
literally exploded into glorious bonfires. But 
these methods were as nothing compared with what 
one chauffeur conceived and, by setting the fashion, 
brought several others to adopt. The man who 
thought about it ought not to be a chauffeur at all ; 
he ought to be at the head of a cinematograph com- 
pany. 

The mountain horse-trail does not begin in Ipek 
itself, but is approached by three or four kilometers 
of regular road, which at a rightangular turn 
shrinks into the two-foot trail. At this point it is 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 337 

cut in the side of a sheer cliff three or four hundred 
feet above a little stream. There is no balustrade; 
the earth simply ends, and space begins. Having 
arrived at this point, to step out of the car, let in 
the clutch, and push down the accelerator was less 
dangerous than the grenade, easier, quicker and 
far more exciting than the fire. It was a great 
game. There was a long gray Cadillac that took 
the brink like a trained hunter, leaping far out over 
the edge. As its power was suddenly released from 
the friction of the road, the car roared and trembled 
like a live animal during the infinitesimal instant 
that it hung upright, held by its own momentum. 
Then the motor dragged its nose downward as true 
as an arrow until it struck the steep slope, down 
which it did quick somersaults, the tires bursting 
with bangs that could be heard above the crash. 
Before it had rolled into the stream it became a ball 
of fire. A ponderous Benz limousine followed, 
and tucked its nose into the slope without a spec- 
tacular leap. It was like a fat old lady faUing 
down-stairs. Its tires blew out, and its body came 
loose from the chassis, both running a race to the 
river. An expensive-looking Fiat behaved much 
in the manner of the Cadillac, and was followed by 
a large French motor-loriy, which plowed a terri- 



:w8 \\ rrii skiuua ixpo kxilk 

blc path clmvn the clifV, pivlly well i^iving knoi'k 
for knock, aiul iiiuilly grinding to splinters the 
wrcckago on Avhich it hit at the hi)ttoni. Others 
followcil, each taking the leap in an indivitliial man- 
ner. Sometimes they Hew almost io hits. The 
tires hivariahly hlew cuit with lond reports. Sinee 
it had to he done, one did wish for every small hoy 
in xVinerica to watch it. 1 think the chaulfenrs 
who hnrned or blew u\) their cars Avere sorry. 

It is donhtless permissible to add that one very 
famons and very cheap American car made the 
leap. It had np goixl s[)eed and its well-known 
ehanicteristic of lightness sent it far beyond the 
brink, where it floated four hundred feet above the 
river. It acted quite as if it wanted to lly, and with 
a little encouragement and experience might have 
sailed on over the mountain-tops, lieaded for De- 
troit. But once started on its downward coiu'se, 
it gyrated with incredible swiftness, (piite as fast 
as its wheels had ever turned, and, bouncing on the 
river-bank, flew beyond the other cars, swam the 
stream, and came to an eternal resting-place on the 
farther side. It was just the sort of a stunt one 
would expect from a nervy little thing like that! 

Buying horses at Ipek was a difVicult gamble. 
By the time we arrived, the horse-market had been 



'JJIK AliMV 'JJfAT C AXXO'l' OIK .'i.'lU 

ih(>r()\i^h\y pickerj mcr, and r^verythirig that couJd 
f>f; rrjistakf;rj for a n-al horsf: had already been taken 
through the mountains. After three days' strenu- 
ous seareh, one fjorse for every two mernhers of the 
unit was proeured. 'i'hey were rniserafjJe, weak 
anJrnaJs, with large sores on their haeks and dis- 
couragement enshrouding them like a eloak. It 
took a lot of will power to put the rough, wooden 
paek-saddles on those raw haeks and to load them 
down with what to a regular pony would have been 
feather-weights. 

Vou may l^e wfjnderirig what there was to carry. 
The largest item in our outfit was our bedding. 
Every person had not i'cwcr than three heavy, 
woolen army blankets, and most of the women had 
twice as many; but six were frerjuently insufficient. 
Then there was the irreducible minimum of luggage 
which the nurses had to carry. This was usually 
rolled up in the blankets, and a j^iece of rubber 
sheeting tied over the outside as a protection from 
the rain and snow. Fortunately, the unit had evac- 
uated Kragujevats with large quantities of nibber 
sheeting. Had it not been so, they would oftener 
than not have slept in soaked blankets. We 
gathered together three days' rations, consisting 
of two loaves of bread, tea, coffee, and a little bit 



840 WITH SKKHIA IN TO KXIl.K 

of sugar, a can of Oxo, and two small tins of con- 
densed milk, for each person. Every one was sup- 
posed to see to the carrying of his own provisions. 
In addition, there was a community cheese, a 
glorious cheese, three pounds oC oleomargarine, a 
few tins of bully-beef, and a little extra milk. The 
remainder of the stores, which had been carei'idly 
hoarded because none knew what lay ahead, we 
could not take with us, and gave away. AVe had 
been told it was three days to iVndrovitze, and we 
believed it. At Androvitze a wagon-road led to 
Scutari. There were rumors of JNlontenegrin 
autos awaiting us there. Thus our provisions 
would be sufiicient, we thought. It was little 
enough for a party of fifty to start off with on a 
journey through the most barren part of barren 
]\Iontenegro. We thought to find provisions of 
some sort at Androvitze. For fit'teen days, how- 
ever, we had to live on the country, never having the 
slightest idea where om* next meal was coming 
from, but frequently knowing that it would not 
come at all. 

Light as our possessions were, when we came to 
pack the horses, they seemed endless. The giant 
JNlontenegrin whom we had retained as a guide, 
Nikola Pavlovitch, was the only pack-horse expert 



t 



5 / 



^ 
V 



•p.- r 

S3 














THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 343 

among our men, and he could not pack twenty 
horses. Packing a horse properly is far more diffi- 
cult than higher mathematics. To begin with, it 
requires a bom diplomat to persuade the owner of 
the pack to throw away half of his belongings be- 
fore the packing is begun, and half of the residue 
after the first tumble. In the second place, one 
must be an animal-trainer to conquer those moun- 
tain ponies; third, only a juggler with a wire-walk- 
ing instinct of balance and with a stock of patience 
such as would make Job look like an irascible edi- 
tor, is adequate for this work. There is no such 
thing as perfection in the art. A perfect pack is 
a purely hypothetical joy. It is an intangible, 
spiritual ideal to the outer court of whose sanctuary 
Nikola approached, while the rest of us floundered 
in pagan darkness. I say "us," because I deter- 
mined to pack Rosinante myself. Rosinante was 
a horse I had bought ; more about her later. After 
two hours I turned out a job that stopped Nikola, 
passing by, and made him exclaim in horror. He 
acted as if I had blasphemed the cult of horse- 
packing by what, to me, looked hke a masterpiece 
of cunning and ingenuity. Nikola was wise. He 
did not argue; he said nothing. He simply seized 
the bridal and led Rosinante at a fast walk for ten 



344 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

yards. Then Rosinante found herself in what she 
must have felt to be an exceedingly undignified and 
embarrassing position. She was low and short ; the 
pack, as I had created it, was high and bulky. 
When it neatly slipped under her belly she was 
pivoted on it, her toes — she had toes I know, or 
later she could not have done all she did — barely 
touching the ground. Nikola started to untie my 
pack, but grew faint before the maze of knots, and 
slashed the ropes. In ten minutes he had my stuff 
and some more besides on Rosinante, and his pack 
was perhaps a third as large as mine. Nikola was 
severely classic in his pack building. I fear mine 
leaned — leaned is the right word — toward the most 
flamboyant of Gothic creations. 

I am going to detail the costume which I finally 
assumed at Ipek. Not because it was typical, but 
because it was not. Despite the fact that some of 
the nurses, after considering the peaks before them 
and the general uselessness of skirts, discarded the 
latter in place of jackets and trousers which they 
themselves had fashioned from red, brown, and 
gray blankets, despite the well-known eccentricities 
of Albanian and Montenegrin tailoring, I boldly 
lay claim to being quite the oddest creature in the 
Balkans at that moment. Since September the 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 345 

iron hand of circumstance had hecn impcHing me 
toward this consummation. I had come out pre- 
pared only for the summer. It was now emx)hati- 
cally winter, and what I had hrought from New 
York in June seemed grotesque at Ipek in Decem- 
ber. It had not been possible to buy. I had had 
to forage, plucking my fig-leaves where I might. 
I claimed the distinction of originating the prac- 
tice of wearing "Porosknit" during the Ipek win- 
ter season. It was a case of greatness thrust 
upon me. As for hosiery, my wardrobe contained 
at this date one pair of gi'cen silk socks. These I 
put ujion my feet, and over them a pair of amor- 
phous gray things that all too plainly had been 
knitted at the opera for some defenseless refugee. 
I thought this would do, but when I had to buy a 
pair of high boots three sizes too large, I saw it 
would not. I went into the town and secured two 
pairs of real Montenegrin socks. They were 
hand-knit of thick snow-white wool. One pair 
was sprinkled with embroidered red roses and 
green leaves. The other had a mountain-scene, 
with lakes, forests, rivers, and snowy peaks, very 
striking, if not convincing. The design was not 
the same on any two socks, and as I wore both pairs 
to fill up the boots, this was a convenience: I did 



346 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

not have to worry to match them. I still had some 
trousers. In the deeps of my bag, secretly hidden 
away against the day when I should be compelled 
to plunge once more into civilization, was a pair 
of vivid-blue summer trousers from a Broadway 
tailor. They were old, but dear to my heart, and 
would, if cherished, I thought, serve very well in 
the first moment of reappearance into the world. 
I could not cherish them longer. I put them on, 
and the combination with the socks was such that 
I was in a hurry to get on mj^ boots. First, how- 
ever, I concealed their vivid blue under a pair of 
English refugee trousers. These were the rem- 
nants of the suit which the ox had butchered weeks 
before. They w^ere made of brown paper-thread 
reinforced with stiff clay. Over them I placed a 
third pair of trousers, stout, but stained, khaki, the 
product of a degenerate tailor in Athens. 

I had only flimsy brown shirts meant for the 
warm weather, but I received as a gift a lovely 
garment of heavy graj'^ flannel. It was a lady's 
shirt, perpetrated by school-girls in some neutral 
land for what must have been their ideal of the 
fattest woman in the world. In the neck they had 
allowed for ample room. When I buttoned it, it 
fell away as gracefully as a hangman's-noose. I 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 347 

could easily have crawled right out through the 
neck of the shirt. Decollete was not en regie 
then, so I gathered the collar up hke the mouth of 
a meal-sack and secured it with a safety-pin. 
This curious rosette-like bunch out of which my 
head emerged was all of the shirt that appeared 
to a cruel world, for I wore two sweaters. The 
first, counted from inward outward, was of white 
near-wool, cut like a Jersey, with no collar. The 
second was a heavy gray woolen coat sweater of 
excellent quality, but distressingly ragged. 

One more touch was added to my costume be- 
fore I put on the nondescript gift-coat mentioned 
before. Remember it was cold in Ipek, and every 
one knew the temperature there would not be a cir- 
cumstance to what it would be on the mountain- 
top. In the general ransacking that preceded the 
transfer from carts to pack-horses, the nurses un- 
earthed many things, some of which were showered 
upon me. I had four "cholera-belts." These are 
broad knitted bands of wool with clasps at the ends, 
and are intended to be fastened securely around 
the abdomen. They were the easiest things to take 
off or put on as the temperature required, so I wore 
them on the outside. One was deep lavender, one 
was orange, one was coral pink, and one was green. 



348 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

I buttoned the orange one under my arms, then the 
others followed, overlapping one another, the 
lavender one being drawn about the hips like the 
scarfs that Spanish dancers affect. They gave 
me the torso of a brilliant segmented bug. At last 
came the coat, which flapped about my knees and 
enveloped my hands in long and shapeless sleeves. 
It had been a nice coat, it was a gift coat; never 
look a gift-coat in the lining. 

Drawn over my head I wore a gray, crocheted 
"slumber-hehiiet." This is an affair much on the 
order of an aviator's cap or a medieval hood of 
mail. It was splendid for the ears and, in con- 
junction with the meal-sack shirt, kept the throat 
very warm. On top of it I wore my broad-briromed 
felt cow-boy hat, tied with shoestrings to the back 
of my head. By the time I had dressed on the 
morning of our departure I was dizzy with trying 
to remember what I had on, and as for realizing 
just what I looked like, it was impossible. After 
one glance, an Irish nurse enlightened me. For 
the first and only time I saw her perplexed; but 
only for an instant did she study me as if trying to 
remember something. 

"Oh, I know," she said; "you look like a piece of 
French pastry with a nut on top." 



THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 349 

Nineteen days later, in that identical costume, 
but a good deal the worse for wear, my landscape 
socks peeping out through my toeless boots, and a 
four-weeks' growth on my face, I drove up one 
Sunday morning to a gilded Roman hotel in the 
Via Ludovise, and, unflinchingly stepping out of 
my fiacre^ faced the obsequious liveried staff. I 
have not been decorated for it, but that is no proof 
that I do not deserve it. 

In the end the horses were packed, and about 
nine o'clock in the morning of December first, un- 
der an entirely cloudless sky, we began to worm 
our way through the crowded town. Several packs 
were scraped off in the crush, and these delayed 
us almost an hour; but in the outskirts the crowd 
lessened and, dropping into the single-file order 
of march that we were to follow for many days, 
we passed out on the ice-covered road that led to 
our mountain-trail. In the edge of the town 
whom should I meet but the daring Peter? He 
embraced me with emotion, remarked apropos of 
nothing at all that he considered me a wonderful 
chauffeur, and struck me for another napoleon, 
if not in the same breath, at any rate with a swift- 
ness that took mine. 

Soon we passed the place where the automobiles 



350 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

had gone over, the nurses wondering at the twisted 
wrecks below. They were to get used to twisted 
wrecks in the next few days — wrecks of pack- 
trains dotted with human bodies. At the begin- 
ning of the trail we faced about due west up the 
profound crag-shadowed valley of the Lim, a rush- 
ing mountain torrent that filled the whole canon 
with sound, so that it was difficult to speak. The 
trail led under overhanging walls of rock a thou- 
sand feet high, and beyond, through a vista of 
pines and gi'ay aiguilles, were the high mountains 
in gleaming, receding ranks. There, faintly above 
the voice of the Lim, came the voice of the big 
guns. We did not know it, but we were hearing 
them for the last time. An hour later they came 
to us no longer. Those women might freeze, they 
might starve, bandits might get them, they might 
even tumble over a precipice, but they had out- 
distanced the Teutonic thunder. 



w 



CHAPTER XI 

OVER THE MOUNTAINS 

HEN we left the sound of the German 



battle-lino on the Montenegrin trail it 
was just about six weeks since I had evacuated 
Valjevo with the Christitch party. Then the Ger- 
man army had been a good twenty or twenty-five 
kilometers away. In these six weeks they had 
fought their way through Serbia under a con- 
tinual rain that turned such roads as the country 
possessed into ribbons of swamp worse than the 
fields and mountains through which they ran. 
With the aid of no railway, they had had to pro- 
vision their troops almost entirely from Austria. 
They had marched through densely wooded hills 
and through barren mountain-passes, constructing 
bridges as they went. In the last part of the march 
they had faced terrific winter. We had marched 
ahead of them. There was nothing in particular 
detaining us except necessary rest for the weaker. 
Our business was to get away. After six weeks 
the German army had gained ten or fifteen kilo- 
meters on us. They were not farther than that 



351 



352 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

from Ipek. The secret of this rapid advance was 
superior artillery and aeroplanes. They stood 
safely out of range, and accurately knocked the 
Serbian positions to pieces. We thought, however, 
that tlie mountains would hold them for a while, 
and when they did come into Montenegro, it would 
be from Prijepolje in the north and Cattaro on the 
coast. 

In choosing the mountains rather than the Ger- 
mans, the nurses undoubtedly made as gi-eat a 
gamble as they ever will, no matter how near the 
front they go, and all were determined to go back 
to war as soon as they were reequipped. They 
were gambling on the weather in December, on the 
mountains of Montenegro. If the weather re- 
mained as it was that morning, all had excellent 
chances of coming through. If a blizzard like the 
one we had faced coming into Ipek or the snow- 
storm we had weathered on the "Field of Black- 
birds" caught them on the high precipices, only the 
very strongest of them had any chance, and that 
was very meager. It is hard to realize just how 
deserted and wild those mountains are, and just 
how slender, makeshift, and primitive are the com- 
munications between Ipek and Androvitze. Only 
at long intervals on the trail are there places where 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 353 

it is even possible to lie down. The precipices are 
on the one hand, the steep mountain-side out of 
which the path has been cut on the other. Some- 
times there are trees on this slope, but frequently 
not. When we went over, two or three feet of 
snow covered the ground. It would have been ut- 
terly impossible to make a camp along the higher 
parts of that trail. It would have been equally 
impossible to go ahead on the path that was like 
polished glass. We could not have had a fire. 
The horses would certainly have fallen over the 
cliffs, our food would have been lost, and those who 
did not freeze would have starved. Strong INIon- 
tenegrins might have come through it ; those weak- 
ened English women would have little chance. 
For three days this gamble lasted. The weather 
we had was remarkable for that season, almost un- 
precedented. Had nature been in a different 
mood, there is no doubt at all that England would 
have mourned the death of all those women in a 
single day. Everybody appreciated the chance 
keenly, consequently no one mentioned it until we 
arrived at Androvitze. Then they looked back at 
the upheaved barrier which they had crossed and 
unanimously shuddered. "Good heavens! if win- 
ter had caught us there!" they said. 



354 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

There are two routes from Ipek to Androvitze. 
The one we took is supposed to be shorter, steeper, 
and more dangerous. We took it on the advice of 
Nikola, for everybody else in the place said that, 
ice-covered as it was, it would be impassable, and 
many who had started that way had turned back. 
It is the path by way of Chakar. The other trail 
was being used by the army and refugees. That 
is why Nikola advised the shorter one for us. He 
was undoubtedly right. He said he would guar- 
antee it was not impassable and where there was a 
great deal of danger he would lead the horses across 
one by one. Nikola had his nerve. He went 
ahead as a scout, and chose our stopping-places for 
the night. In the mountains he was invaluable. 

A small party of nurses, including the three who 
had formerly been with me, accompanied by two 
Englishmen and some attendants, left Ipek a day 
earlier than we, but by the army route. They had 
a horrible time. On one occasion they tramped 
from six o'clock in the morning until two o'clock 
the next morning in search of shelter, and finally 
shared an old shed crowded with soldiers, who had 
built a fire. Had they stopped sooner they would 
have frozen to death. One of these women was 
well past middle age. Such things as this by such 




?3 a 



3 0) 



O o 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 357 

women are not done by physical strength, but by 
an indomitable sporting will power. Under such 
conditions it is vastly easier to lie down and die. 

Some French, Russian, and Norwegian nurses 
also faced these ordeals, but in general suffered 
less, I think, because they came through earlier. 
There were four Norwegian girls with us. The 
mountains were home to them, and they invariably 
led the pack. Only Nikola could outdistance 
them. They looked and felt their best climbing up 
or racing down steep places. 

Those who took the army route saw sights more 
terrible than those we saw. With us mainly it was 
pack-horses that we looked down on, dashed to 
death at the foot of the precipices. The other 
route was full of human wreckage, with officers, 
soldiers, artillery, and horses jumbled together in 
the gorges below them, and dead refugees lying 
on the slopes above them. We met numerous 
wounded soldiers, stragglers, hardy mountain 
refugees, and military couriers. There were not 
enough to inconvenience us. We had that for- 
bidding trail pretty much to ourselves. Trusting 
to Nikola, we clung to the icy thread that led al- 
ways to wilder and more remote mountain refuges. 

Whatever might lie before us, we considered the 



358 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

present hour, and found it good as we followed 
the gradually ascending path that was now hunt- 
ing determinedly for a way out of the gorge in 
order to run along the ridges above. The sun con- 
tinued to beat down on us, and the snow melted a 
bit, ameliorating the aggravating slipperiness of 
our path. The exertion of climbing warmed us 
up, too, so that I began to regret the thoroughness 
with which I had dressed. At the top of a spe- 
cially steep climb I stopped to wait for a group of 
the nurses toiling up behind me. They were part 
of the Irish contingent, and scrambled up the slip- 
pery incline with ti'ue Gaelic abhorrence. They 
had on hea\y coats and sweaters and knitted hoods 
and thick mitts, so that all I could see of the real 
Irish was a small patch of face. Blowing and 
puffing, the foremost, and the most insuppressible, 
reached the top. Under her woolen helmet her 
forehead streamed with perspiration, and she began 
tearing off her thick gloves before she stopped 
scrambling. She looked like an Arctic explorer. 
"Oh, isn't the heat terrible!" she panted, and sat 
down in a snow-drift. 

It was terrible, and grew more inconvenient as 
noon approached. With the afternoon, however, 
the chill of the mountains came on, and we were 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 359 

glad of our elaborate arrangements to meet it. 
Only once in the day-time did we suffer from cold 
while crossing the mountains. Then it was for the 
two or three hours when we were crossing the bald 
snow-fields of Chakar, a mountain that is swept by 
gales from every direction and which is on the 
divide between the Adriatic and the ^Egean. 

We never stopped for a midday meal in the 
mountains. We had neither the time nor the meal. 
As we trudged along, we gnawed on pieces of sol- 
diers' biscuit or stale bread, and very delicious it 
was, too. We had got a comparatively late start, 
so that the ice had time to thaw a little, making it 
possible for the horses to keep on their feet nearly 
all the time. Of course half a dozen packs or so fell 
off just at first, but after a while each driver 
learned the one position in which his pack would 
ride, and our trouble in that direction lessened. 

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when 
we began to descend once more into the narrow 
valley. Here it was sufficiently widened out to 
allow the "road" to run along the morass of 
rounded boulders which ages of furious floods had 
piled there. This valley was spooky enough. 
The sun, disappearing behind the high peaks ahead, 
left blue shadows among the pines that were al- 



360 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

most as dark as night. I crunched along on the 
snow, now and then stumbhng when one foot would 
go into a crevice between the rocks. Here I met a 
specter. I was alone. I had forged ahead of the 
party, expecting to find Nikola and the camping- 
place soon. Intent only on watching my footing, 
I was startled by a cry out of the shadows on my 
right. "Americano, Americano, " it said, and then, 
"Dohrun, Dobrun, Americano, Dohrun."' Out of 
the shadow something seized my arm, and on the 
instant I saw a strange Serbian soldier very much 
the worse for wear, ragged, emaciated, hollow-eyed, 
but smiling pleasantly. How on earth he had 
recognized and placed me I did not know, nor could 
he tell me very clearly, for he spoke only a little 
French, though he understood it fairly well. I 
asked him how he knew me as an American, and 
he pointed to my hat. None but an American 
could be under a hat like that. As for Dobrun, 
he informed that he had been there when we were, 
and was one of "the captain's" men. He was 
hurrying back from Androvitze to Ipek with des- 
patches. He had messages for my Dobrun cap- 
tain, who, he informed me, had been at Ipek several 
days. I was greatly disappointed that I had not 
seen my good friend there, but meeting this soldier 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 361 

in the wilderness, and at least hearing that he was 
not dead, made the whole trip more eheerful. 

Nikola had made heroic efforts to get us shelter 
that night and, considering the circumstances, had 
succeeded very well. Where the valley spread in- 
to a little flat a quarter of a mile long and a third as 
wide were two Montenegrin taverns built to house 
the natives who passed that way. One at the west 
end of the flat was built of stone. The ground 
floor was a stable for the horses, as is always the 
case in small Montenegrin inns. The second floor 
was one medium-sized room, without any furniture 
to speak of, and a tiny kitchen, with a stove built 
into the wall. Fifty or sixty people had engaged 
accommodations there for the night, and though 
the landlord was perfectly willing to take us, too, 
as Nikola quite seriously put it, it would be "a little 
crowded." The other edifice stood at the opposite 
end of the flat. Its first story was also built of 
stone and used as a stable. On top of this a wooden 
shack had been erected. There was one fairly 
good-sized room with four windows, an old stove, 
and some benches. A second room adjoined it, but 
was only about a third as large, and there were two 
tiny rooms like cupboards. Also there was a loft 
filled with hay. By lying like sticks in a wood- 



362 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

pile all the women could have slept in the big room, 
which Nikola had procured for their benefit. The 
cracks in the floor allowed the steaming air from 
the stable underneath to spread to the chamber 
above. 

On the ground all about the place was deep snow, 
but the weather was perfectly clear. Eight of 
the women said they would sleep on the snow 
more comfortably than in the hotel, "Hotel de 
I'Ecurie" we called it. Soon after we had partaken 
of abundant tea and coffee, and of cheese and tinned 
meat sparingly, I found them spreading their 
blankets upon the smooth snow. A hilarious mood 
prevailed. They were in for something which 
generations of their ancestors had never done. 
They had slept in every conceivable place and con- 
dition except right on the snow, and now they were 
going to do that. There was no acting; they were 
really hilarious. They had tramped only ten con- 
tinuous hours, and had dined on what at home they 
would never have touched. They had only four- 
teen hours of march to do next day. 

With their insufficient blankets spread neatly on 
the snow, I saw them come up to the cook's fire, 
where three kettles of water were now boiling. 
From the little rucksacks which they carried, each 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 363 

drew out a hot-water bottle and with the best bed- 
room air of comfort filled it! Side by side with my 
enigma of why England is not nm by her women 
stands my enigma of the hot-water bottle. It was 
not the first or the last time that I saw that perform- 
ance. They carried hot-water bottles to bed with 
them when they slept as the little tinned sardines 
are thought to sleep; they carried them when they 
went to bed on the dry grass ; they filled the kettles 
from rivulets, and heated them in the shelter of a 
wagon when their bed was to be in the puddles 
about the wagon ; no harem resting-place was com- 
plete until the astonished old Turk had brought 
enough hot water to fill forty bottles. When they 
finally got on board ship to cross the Adriatic at its 
most dangerous point, while submarines were chas- 
ing them, they ferreted out the ship's galley, filled 
their hot- water bottles, lay down on deck, and slept 
or were sick as the case might be. No matter what 
happened, I never heard one of them grumble as 
long as she had a bottle magically warm. No mat- 
ter what our good luck, I never saw one satisfied 
when she could not have her bottle filled at bed- 
time. I believe if the British Government would 
furnish every militant suffragette with a nice, warm 
hot- water bottle every evening, they would be found 



364 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

as docile as lambs. Going to bed with three 
blankets on that snow, and carefully preparing a 
hot-water bottle, seemed to me like Jess Willard 
having his hair curled before a championship fight. 
It seemed to me fated to be about the most transient 
pleasure I had ever met, but if it made women like 
those happy, nothing under heaven was too dear 
to buy it. 

My view of the matter amused them immensely, 
but they heartily disagreed with it. They said not 
only was a hot-water bottle a fine thing to sleep 
with, but in the cold mornings before the march 
began the water still retained enough warmth to 
make it agreeable for a wash. Next morning one 
let me try it, and what she said was true. After 
that lots of them wanted to lend me a bottle. They 
nearly all had extra ones. They had thrown away 
their clothing, their precious souvenirs, they could 
not carry as much food as they needed; but they 
had extra hot- water bottles ! 

A bell tent had been brought along in case we 
had to camp where there were no houses at all. It 
occurred to me that this, spread as a ground sheet 
over a lot of hay, would aid the hot-water bottles. 
So I searched it out. From the landlord, a stingy 
old codger who had charged only twenty dollars 




Trackless mountains of Albania 




A mountain home in Montenegro 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 367 

for that stable, more than he would ordinarily make 
in a year, I bought some hay, and soon had a fairly 
decent place for the eight to sleep side by side. 
They at once declared it the best bed they had had 
in a long while. There appeared to be a scarcity 
of fire-wood aboiit "Hotel de I'Ecurie," though 
there was no excuse for it, because the mountains 
round about were well wooded. This had deterred 
the women from having a fire at their feet. One 
does not sleep out many times without discovering 
that a fire at one's feet is a luxury that should not 
be missed. While making an excursion down the 
stream, I came upon a big pile of fat pine planks. 
They were hidden there, with heavy rocks piled on 
them. Not wishing further to annoy the landlord, 
as quietly as possible I dragged about nine tenths 
of this lumber to our "camj)." , Then we had a 
great fire, which, so the nurses said, was the final 
touch to their comfort. But my sins came home to 
roost. 

On a carpenter's-table which I dragged from 
the side of the inn I lay down by the side of the fire 
to sleep. What little wind there was blew the fire 
away from the women toward my table. I had 
piled the most massive planks I could find along 
the edge of their bed to guard against the fire 



368 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

spreading there. In my position I got the warm 
air with but httle smoke, which floated above me, 
and soon with the others I was asleep. 

I closed my eyes on the wonderful Montenegrin 
sky, sprinkled with its magnificent stars, and on 
the glittering peaks about us. The women, I fancy, 
were already at home again in quiet old Edinburgh, 
in London, wonderful London as it was before 
1914, living their wonted hves in the Scotch High- 
lands or amid the wild beauty of Wales. I, too, 
dreamed. Despite the dead slumber which fatigue 
brought to us, we always dreamed, mostly of home, 
seldom of war. I remember distinctly I had dined 
at an uptown restaurant. I was going to hear 
"Siegfried." At One Hundred and Fourth Street 
and Broadway I got into a taxi, and directed the 
chauffeur to drive as fast as possible to the JNIetro- 
politan. It was cold in the taxi. I looked to see 
if the windows were up. They were, but it grew 
colder, while Broadway became brighter and 
brighter. I thought I had never in my life seen 
the city so brilliant, animated, gay. xVt Sixty-sixth 
Street the glare seemed to hurt my eyes, and, as 
we rounded Columbus Circle, the illumination be- 
came a blinding flash, rising and falling, flickering, 
but extending everyw^here. I woke up, and my 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 369 

first impression was that I was much colder than 
when I lay down. Also the whole place was filled 
with hriglit light that made the snow glisten. In a 
few seconds I took in what had happened. The 
wind had shifted away from me, had caused the 
barrier to catch fire, and the edge of the women's 
palet was blazing high. Due to the snow under- 
neath, the flame could be easily stamped out, and 
when there was only smoking straw, for the first 
time I became aware that not one of the women 
had waked up. The edge of the straw, the tent, 
the fringes of their rugs, were burnt within six 
inches of their feet. They were sleeping as calmly 
as ever. That is what fatigue and cold mountain 
air will do. 

I raked the fire farther away, fixed a new barrier, 
heavih^ plastered with snow, which, melting, would 
keep it wet, and convinced that everything was all 
right, I lay do^^^l again without waking any one. 
I had not intended going to sleep, but after moving 
my table nearer to the fire, for it was now incredibly 
cold in the valley, I dozed off again. I heard the 
huge icicles that hung from an old mill-sluice near 
bj^ snapping and cracking, and the trees on the 
mountain-side crackled and popped with the frost. 
The women told me later they were having various 



370 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

dreams with one common characteristic; in all of 
them their feet were delightfully comfortable — 
"All cozy and warm," one said. 

I do not think I dreamed any more, but after a 
while I waked up. It was the second time in my 
life that I ever understood what people seem to 
mean when they talk of "Providence." The other 
time was also in Serbia. Sir Ralph Paget and I 
were motoring on one of the most thrilling roads in 
Bosnia. There was the usual tremendous precipice 
on one side, the lip of the road being only crumbling 
dirt. What looked like a horrible death came to 
an officer on horseback just as we passed him. Sir 
Ralph was in the front seat with me. For perhaps 
twenty seconds we both looked back, sick with the 
horror of what we had seen. There was a slight 
curve in the road just ahead, but I had not noticed 
this. What made me turn round again at the end 
of certainly not more than twenty seconds I do 
not know. I had not finished looking behind; I 
had forgotten for the time all sense of danger. 
But a feeling I shall never forget turned my head, 
as if by force, without any thought on my part, to 
the road ahead. There was not any road there. 
Over the steaming radiator I looked down, down, 
down on feathery treetops waving in an abyss. My 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 371 

radiator was hanging over the chff . As I spun the 
wheel, I had not the shghtest idea the car would 
answer ; I knew my front wheels were already over. 
They were not. With the fountain-pen that is now 
writing these words the distance between my track 
in the crumbling dirt and the sheer drop was meas- 
ured. When the butt was placed on the outer edge 
of that deep rut, the point jutted into space. Sir 
Ralph had looked round when I had spun the car. 

"We were n't looking," he said, smiling quietly, 
and in the very best English fashion that was the 
end of the matter. 

This same feeling now woke me up. I was not 
cold ; there was no noise. The time had come when 
somebody ought to wake, and somebody did. The 
wind had freshened, and changed more directly to- 
ward the women. IMy barrier had caught fire again, 
and the dry hay, the canvas, and the rugs beyond it 
were blazing, while the wind fanned it like a fur- 
nace. Almost simultaneously with me the Women 
awoke. Most of them were tied up in sleeping-bags 
which they had sewn their blankets into. All were 
tangled up, and the fire was simply snapping at 
them. This time the deep snow on which they slept 
undoubtedly saved them from horrible burns, if not 
from death. I had on high boots of heavy leather, 



372 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

and this fact, joined with the deep snow and my 
blanket as a flail, made it possible to put out the 
fire. It had burned the lower edges of their cloth- 
ing, had destroyed their shoes, which they had re- 
moved and placed near their feet, and had burned 
about half their rugs. In the middle of this tangle, 
— smoking rugs, bags, woolen scarfs, tent canvas 
and straw, — out of which they could not extract 
themselves they sat up and laughed. Another new 
experience! Planning how to borrow one another's 
extra boots for the march in the morning, they fell 
asleep, but this time I had no desire to neglect that 
fire again. 

It had not been what one would call a peaceful 
night for us around the fire, though those within 
the "hotel" were unaware of all the excitement. 
Just before dawn the final foray came. There was 
not supposed to be much danger from bandits on 
the route which we had chosen, especially as the 
]Montenegrin Government had taken precautions 
to police it. Still, as Nikola had expressed it to 
me, whenever we went into camp at night, "some 
of those dogs would be pretty likely to be sneaking 
about." As I lay there looking up at the paling 
sky, I was startled by some rifle-shots a little way 
up the path by which we had come. Bullets whistled 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 373 

through the forest, and a rather steady crack, crack 
kept up for some time on both sides of the valley. 
Everybody was startled, and none knew what to 
expect; but the firing did not come closer, and we 
never discovered what was the occasion of it. 

When we got under way this second day a 
clammy mist enshrouded everything and shut off 
from our path the thawing sunlight. The follow- 
ing four or five hours were exceedingly difficult. 
We began chmbing out of the valley almost at once 
by a forty-five-degree ascent which "switch-backed" 
in the shortest possible distance to the ridge above. 
The higher up we climbed, the steej)er became 
the path. This was most unfortunate. The lead- 
ing ponies fell down and slid rapidly backward, 
losing their packs and knocking those behind off 
their feet. It was like knocking down a row of 
dominoes which one has stood on end. When a 
front pony fell hard, it was "Look out, all below I 
Stand from under, and get away from the precipice 
edge!" As many as six or eight ponies were down 
at once, and the contents of their packs scattered 
everywhere, while the rest of the bunch slipped 
and pawed, struggling to keep their balance. Some 
of the nurses helped matters by going ahead, and 
with butcher-knives, hatchets, and bayonets chip- 



374 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

ping the surface of the ice. Finally pieces of blan- 
kets were tied about the horses' hoofs, and this 
solved the problem almost completely. 

Rosinante never slipped down. From Ipek to 
Androvitze she bore my meager luggage and much 
of the time invalids of the party, and she never so 
much as stumbled badl}'. I think every other horse 
was down at least once, but, despite the fact (which 
I had discovered only after I bought her) that her 
wind was broken, and on every slope she sounded 
like a second-hand street-organ, she kept on her 
feet. This saved me much trouble, for after the 
first day I led her myself, and had she slipped like 
some of the others, I would have been there yet, 
trying to put the pack on her back. 

In the late afternoon we came up a narrow, heav- 
ily wooded gorge of marvelous beauty to the foot 
of Chakar, and there stopped for the night in a 
stone inn which was not large or clean, but dry and 
warm. JNIost of the snow was gone on the lower 
slopes of Chakar, but on top we could see the high 
winds blowing the snow-clouds about. One cannot 
skirt about the lower shoulders of this mountain 
or escape its highest snow-fields. The way to the 
sea leads squarely over its rounded summit — a way 
that in summer must be a delight to scramble up, 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 377 

but in December was not so inviting. Nikola en- 
couraged us with cheerful promises. Once over 
that summit, he said, all our way to the sea would 
be "down-hill." At that stage of our march, next 
to flying, "down-hill" represented the summum bo- 
num to us. In a broad geographical sense Nikola 
was right. Chakar was the divide, but in a practical 
tracking tramp's understanding of the case. Heav- 
ens! he was a liar! He did not mention the Little 
Kom. If he had, I think I should have passed the 
winter on the Oriental side of Chakar. 

Next day we crossed Chakar, but that is all we 
did. Like a famous nursery hero, we simply went 
up and came down again. That night we passed 
in a jMontenegrin village. All that I can remem- 
ber about it is that I saw here a most beautiful 
child, a boy of ten whose father had just been shot; 
that we sat around a camp-fire while the Irish girls 
sang songs ; and that Nikola paid forty dollars for 
enough hay to feed twenty horses two times. 

The fourth day, through mud the like of which 
I never want to see again, we came to Androvitze, 
only to find no provisions there, and to hear the 
glad tidings that because of a wash-out no automo- 
biles could come up. From then on began a tramp 
of nine days, each day filled with hopes that the 



378 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

next would see us in automobiles or carts. They 
never came; we walked into Podgoritze. 

Just as I was putting the finishing touches to 
Rosinante's saddle before leaving Androvitze, I 
felt a hand fall heavily on my shoulder and, turning 
around, beheld ^'mon cher Capitaine/' him of the 
far-off, happy Dobrun days. The captain loves his 
country, and so do I. After a while, when we did 
speak, it was of other and trivial things. We prom- 
ised if possible to meet at Podgoritze, and if not 
there, at Scutari, and if not there, in Paris, and, as 
a last resort, in New York. The captain's physique 
and stoicism are Serb ; his perfect manner, his bon- 
homie^ his warm humanity are French, and the mix- 
ture makes "mon cher Capitaine^^ a very charming 
companion. There is nothing Teutonic about him. 

The moist, warm breath of the Adriatic came up 
to meet us at Androvitze. We began to have mists 
and heavy rains, with now and then a clear day and 
the skies of southern Italy. The invaders and the 
savage mountains were behind, and somewhere 
down the very good road that now led on before us 
was the sea. During that monotonous succession 
of days before we came to Podgoritze, the sea and 
how we should get across it, became the main sub- 
ject of conversation, the constant thought in our 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 379 

minds. For weeks the sea had been our goal, a 
practical goal to us, an impossible dream of escape 
to the starving hundred thousand at Prizrend. Ru- 
mors began to float uj) to us by courses we could not 
trace of ships that would take us to Italy. One 
said that all would have to go down the coast to 
Durazzo. Several told of an American sailing-ves- 
sel, the Albania^ which would be waiting at San 
Giovanni di Medua to take off all neutrals, all 
women and children, and the men who were over 
military age. The rest would have to go to Du- 
razzo. Still others told of British transports wait- 
ing to help the army and the refugees, and some 
spoke of no hope at all, saying that the Adriatic 
was too dangerous. The mythical sailing-vessel 
was the favorite, and we all believed in it more than 
in any other. 

Then one day a young Englishman in clean, new 
khaki came riding up the road to meet us. He was 
a representative of the British Serbian Relief Fund 
sent out to survey the field in Montenegro. Two 
weeks before he had been in London, and gave us 
the first news of the world we had had in six weeks. 
He had crossed the Adi'iatic on a torpedo-boat, 
sending his luggage by a small vessel which had 
been torpedoed. He brought a cryptic message. 



380 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

saying that Sir Ralph Paget wished all the British 
to hurry to Scutari as fast as possible. This was 
encouraging. It even seemed as if those in author- 
ity were at last taking cognizance of the fact that 
there were British women who might need aid. We 
almost dared to hope it might mean a break in the 
policy of laissez-faire, which, during the retreat, had 
left the units to shift for themselves as best they 
could, with the purely voluntary aid of Serbians, 
who brought them out of Serbia, saw to housing 
and provisioning them, and made them as safe as 
possible. The things which a British representative 
might have done for them, such as going ahead and 
securing what food could be had, seeing to accom- 
modations at the places where they stopped, collect- 
ing horses at Prizrend and Ipek, establishing tem- 
porary camps in the mountains at easy stages, where 
on arrival the women might have found tents and 
plentiful fires, and finally some semblance of system 
which at least would not have allowed them to feel 
utterly abandoned by their own Government were 
not done at all. The doctors and nurses recognized 
early that they could stay and be captured or starve 
without any apparent concern on the part of the 
officials whom they had thought responsible for 
them. The English women should have been forced 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 381 

to come out earlier than they did, and, to be per- 
fectly fair, I understand that Sir Ralph Paget sug- 
gested this to them, but they refused. After they 
were allowed to remain, a little system, a little 
thought, foresight, and trouble could have alleviated 
immensely their hardships. By using half a dozen 
men and horses, fixed camps could have been estab- 
lished which would have rendered the mountain- 
trails much less arduous. Not until Scutari, where 
there was a British consul, did anything resembling 
official aid come to the British women, and here it 
was in a slipshod, slap-dash fashion. 

Soon after leaving Androvitze we came to the 
Little Kom, a mountain rising some eight thousand 
feet, flanked on the east by a magnificent snow peak 
much higher. The blizzard that had struck us at 
Ipek had caught many refugees, soldiers, and pris- 
oners here. Forty Bulgarians are said to have been 
found frozen to death in a space of a hundred yards. 
Snow lay deep upon its summit when we climbed 
it, but in the valleys below the daj^ was like early 
autumn. After the Little Kom, Nikola's oft-re- 
peated promise of a down-hill trail became more or 
less true. It was our last really hard climb, and 
I was not sorry, for going up it I fainted three 
times, a thing I never knew I could do before. 



382 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

The weaker women rode up, but one was so afraid 
of horses she would not mount. I shall never for- 
get her at the end of that day; but no one heard a 
word of complaint from her. 

One night we stopped at a INIontenegrin village 
of most primitive aspect. The people were all in 
native costume. No trace of civilization as we 
know it was evident. At one of the huts I applied 
for shelter. The peasant who came to the door to 
meet me was dressed in skin-tight trousers of white 
wool, richly ornamented in fancy designs of black 
braid. His shirt was yellow linen, and his short 
jacket of the same material as the trousers, but 
even more ornate. He wore upon his head a white 
skull-cap, and around his waist was a flaming 
knitted sash. His feet were clothed in brilliant 
socks and opanki. He was six feet tall at least; 
his black eyes flashed, and his black hair fell long 
and thick from under his white cap. As pictur- 
esque and primitive a model as any artist could 
wishl Behind him in the smoky "kitchen," on the 
earthen floor of which a fire burned while the smoke 
wandered where it would, stood a fierce Montene- 
grin beauty, proud, disdainful, but not inhospitable. 
In her arms was a young edition of the man. These 
wild people filled me with admiration, gave me the 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 383 

taste of remote, unbeaten paths which every traveler 
loves. Here was the real thing, a native family 
just as it was on that hillside four centuries ago. 
I made signs to my charming bandit host. 

"Come in," he said. "I am from Chicago; where 
do you come from?" 

A dozen years in Chicago had given him enough 
money to return to his ancestral home, buy a good 
farm, marry, and revert in luxurj'^ to the life of his 
fathers. I believe a greater percentage of Mon- 
tenegrins have been to America than of any other 
nation. Because of my hat, they were continually 
hailing me, and they ruined that unbeaten-trail taste 
for which I sought so avidly. 

Several incidents broke momentarily this part 
of our march, but, for the most part, it was of a 
sameness — day succeeding day consumed in quick 
marching. Every morning there was the rush to 
get on the road, and every waning afternoon the 
wonder when and where we would camp, and 
whether it would be grass and a fragrant wood-fire 
or sloppy mud and a vile inn. There was the ex- 
citement when "Sunny Jim," the bright and youth- 
ful Serbian orphan whom one of the women was 
bringing from the wilds of Serbia to the wilds of 
London, was accused of making off with an officer's 



384 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

pocket-book. Our indignant declarations of Jim's 
impeccable honesty helped not at all until a search, 
which inexorably extended to the accused's young 
skin, proved beyond doubt his innocence. Then 
there was the morning when just above our camp a 
firing-squad ended the career of two deserters, and 
the day when, almost starving, we came to a beau- 
tiful river and purchased a forty-pound fish, the 
very best fish ever caught. 

So gradually we neared Podgoritze. At least 
from there we hoped to get conveyances for the 
three hours' drive to Plavnitze, on Scutari Lake, 
there to take a boat for Scutari. We had come 
to consider Podgoritze as marking the end of our 
troubles. Near it one morning I was leading Rosi- 
nante, who carried one of the women. She had 
been one of the strongest until at Jakova a Turkish 
dog of doubtful lineage, but undoubted fierceness, 
had attacked and bitten her badly. At home she 
designed dainty costumes for actresses. This was 
her first experience at roughing it, but she was 
enjoying everything immensely. 

"I am so happy!" she said, looking down at her 
dress and at me. "We are going to be home just 
in time for the January sales!" So after a week. 



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OVER THE MOUNTAINS 387 

a good part of it spent in resting, we came to Pod- 
goritze. 

On leaving Androvitze we had come each day 
more in contact with the army, for the route they 
had taken joined ours there. Many thousands 
were about Podgoritze when we arrived, and many 
more thousands had abeady reached Scutari. 
Looking at these filthy, ragged, starved, ill men, one 
wondered if it were still permissible to call them an 
army. How could any feeling of nationality or 
cohesion now be alive in this dull, horror-stricken 
horde? Could this frayed remnant, these hollow- 
eyed, harassed officers, these soldiers, as mechanical 
and listless as automata, be really considered a mih- 
tary force? Had not that rugged, surpassingly 
brave thing, the almost mystical esprit de corps 
which had endured a continuous and hopeless re- 
treat for ten weeks, died when the peaks above Ipek 
shut off the distant Serbian plains? Had not the 
story of Serbia ended in death and destruction at 
the evacuation of Ipek? 

It is true that the retreat through Albania and 
Montenegro was only a tour de force in the business 
of getting away. At the moment the need for 
armies had ceased ; there was no country to defend. 



388 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

It was a flight without mihtary manoeuvering, 
merely sauve qui ijeut. A few thousand were able 
to find food and equipment sufficient to aid the 
JMontenegrins, and in Albania about twenty thou- 
sand were actively engaged. The sole object of 
all the others was to reach Scutari, where it would 
be "up to" the Allies to reclothe, rearm, and provi- 
sion them. From one thousand to fifteen hundred 
were lost in Albania by savage native attacks. 
]Many hundreds at least must have died on both lines 
of march from cold, exposure, and starvation. A 
good part of the smaller artillery was saved. The 
soldiers, weakened as they were, went through in- 
credible hardships to effect this. In many places 
on the ^lontenegi'in route it had been necessary to 
take the guns to pieces, and the men had had to 
carry the heavy barrels on their shoulders. The 
paths were slippery with ice, the ascents long and 
very steep, the precipices at times dizzying, the cold 
severe, and there was little or no shelter. 

But we did not see a disorganized, soulless mass 
about Podgoritze. We saw the cream of Serbia's 
fighting men, the nearly superhuman residue which 
remained after shot and shell, disease, exhaustion, 
cold, and starvation had done their cruel censoring; 
after the savage teeth of frozen peaks had combed 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 389 

out all but the strongest. And the near-annihila- 
tion of their bodies only allowed to be seen more 
clearly the unfaltering flame of their determination 
and their devotion to the glorious quest, the tem- 
porary loss of which hurt them more deeply than all 
they had to bear. Dauntless and alone, they had 
fought the unequal battle, and defeat was more bit- 
ter than death. 

Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria did not destroy 
the Serbian army, nor did it die of utter despair at 
Ipek, though well it might have. The Serbian 
army cannot die. In two months they have re- 
organized, reequipped, and rested. The hundred 
and fifty thousand of them will not be a pleasant 
army to meet. Remember their position. Nearly 
every one of these men has left a family behind him, 
and that family is pretty sure to be starving. At 
best it is exposed to the dangers of very dangerous 
invaders. This may dishearten a man, but it also 
makes him desperate. The sufferings of that fugi- 
tive army gathered about a fugitive prince in a 
friendly, but foreign, country is not even half phys- 
ical, however great their burden is in that direction. 

To realize at all what the loss of Serbia means to 
the Serb, one must consider not only the separation 
from home and family; one must understand a 



390 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

little the strength and depth of the Southern Slav's 
desire for a free Slav nation. One must know the 
extent to which this idea has permeated all his 
thoughts, all his hterature, all his folk-songs for 
five hundred years. One must have learned that it 
is his religion. And to know this one must have 
seen what Mme. Christitch has charmingly pointed 
out in her comments on "The Soul of the Southern 
Slav," namely, how his very life is bound up in the 
instinct of brotherhood. 

A man's brother or cousin in Serbia is more to 
him than his wife and children, devoted as he is 
to them. The loss of a brother is the direst of all 
calamities, and, to the Southern Slav, all lovers 
of Slavic liberty are brothers. This feeling has re- 
sulted in an idealistic patriotism that only those who 
have come in contact with it can realize. It is a 
patriotism that is astounding in its capacity for 
sacrifice. It is firmly and irrevocably resolved on 
the liberation or the extermination of its people. 
Whether one agrees with its desires or not, its pres- 
ence is undeniably there, fiercely blazing in the deso- 
late, disease-swept camps of that exiled army. Its 
sorrow is not of physical discomfort or even of per- 
sonal loss. Centuries of dogged fighting have 



OVER THE MOUNTAINS 391 

taught the Serb to accept such things as part of the 
day's work. Their grief is deeper than that. It 
is the crushing sense of a supreme idol broken. 



CHAPTER XII 

WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 

PODGORITZE, a straggling white blot on 
the Plain of Zeta, facing fertile prairies 
southward as far as Lake Scutari, flanked on the 
north by utterly barren peaks, for many centuries 
has had a rugged history dotted with incidents of 
more than local significance. Its environs gave the 
great Diocletian to the Roman Empire and even 
at that time it stood high among the cities of Illy- 
rium. Around it have raged many desperate con- 
flicts between the Turks and the ever-victorious 
Montenegrins. To-daj^ — or yesterday — it was the 
business capital of Montenegro, and but for its 
proximity to the Albanian border would doubtless 
have been the political capital also. It has been 
said that nowhere west of Constantinople could such 
colorful and astounding market-scenes be met as 
in Podgoritze. The color, when I saw it, was dis- 
tinctly drab but the scenes were no less exciting. 

To get down to intimate things : we were hungry, 
although at the "hotel" we made a pretense at meals 

392 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 393 

— a bit of unclassified meat, bread made of bran and 
sand, Turkish coffee, and creme de menthe, a whole 
bottle of it, which made us feel civilized beyond 
words. In the market-place were still a few things 
for sale. There were tiny fish from Scutari Lake 
which were peddled around by old men in incredible 
filth and the odor of which caressed the very stars. 
Also one could get — by fighting one's way to them 
— decayed apples, a little sausage that rivaled the 
fish in smell, and now and then a ham. But the 
hams which at this time still survived the mob- 
hunger were old, battle-scarred veterans which re- 
mained intact through the self-same weapon as the 
fish and sausage. One wonderful unsullied thing 
we found, many pounds of fresh kimah, a sort of 
clotted cream which in the Balkans passes muster 
for butter. It is very delicious and nothing could 
have been more tempting to us. I could scarcely 
believe my eyes when I saw it on a little table in 
the market-place, guarded by two comely peasant 
women. A large crowd was already around and 
more were gathering each minute, but no one was 
buying and I wondered if none of them had any 
money. Forcing my way through the by-standers, 
I found a Montenegrin policeman in violent argu- 
ment with the proprietors of the popular kimak 



394 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

and with certain indignant members of the crowd. 
This did not worry me at all. JNIy w^hole attention 
was centered on that cream-cheese with a concentra- 
tion that would have delighted William James. 
Upon the table I laid ten dinars and, picking up a 
knife, began the attack on a large and elegant 
chunk. The women, the policeman, and part of 
the mob yelled protests and made threatening ges- 
tures, but some of the crowd cried "dobro Ameri- 
kanske'* and evidently approved my direct method. 
The policeman, who was a walking museum of beau- 
tiful, barbaric arms, ancient pistols of ivory and 
silver, sabers and daggers thrust into a marvelous 
crimson sash, began addressing me in English. Of 
course he had been in America, everybody has in 
Montenegro. It is the prerequisite to possessing 
a small fortune, marrying, and living happily ever 
afterward. He said the women would not be al- 
lowed to sell any of the kimak for more than four 
dinars a kilogram, that being a fair price, no matter 
how much we might need it. The women insisted 
that in extraordinary times extraordinary prices 
were permissible and flatty refused to sell for less 
than ten dinars, their determination being strength- 
ened by numerous offers from the crowd of twenty 
and even thirty dinars a kilo. Around this impasse 





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Tlie onlv street in San Giovanni di Medua 




'I'ho forty Britibh women of the Stobart ujiabion waiting for tlie 
boat at Plavitnitze 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 397 

there seemed no way. They would not sell at the 
legal price and they never did, I suppose. That 
cheese remained there all day with a ravenous crowd 
round it and at nightfall the women went away — 
most likely to meet a wealthy purchaser in some 
corner far removed from the somewhat uncompro- 
mising arm of the Montenegi'in law. 

At Podgoritze I met the Captain once more, and 
with elaborate courtesy he invited me to dine with 
a group of officers in the evening. The hour was 
at six but we were having such an absorbing time 
investigating Podgoritze and recounting expe- 
riences that we were fifteen minutes late in arriving 
at the dingy place where the officers had mess. I 
shall never forget the little scene as we entered, 
though why it remains so vivid I scarcely know. 
The commissariat of the inn had failed almost com- 
pletely and what we saw was a dozen officers in 
bedraggled uniforms and a look in their eyes that 
I cannot define. It was common to all of them and 
had in it at once suffering and starvation, humiliated 
pride, and the deepest patriotic grief. It was 
always only from their gaze that one could tell what 
hell these refined and highly educated men were 
suffering; in their speech they were always either 
terse and practical, or cheerful and witty. At each 



398 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

end of the bare, greasy pine table was an empty 
wine bottle with a tallow candle stuck in it, giving 
the only light in the evil-smelling room. Lying on 
three or four heavy earthen platters were scanty 
stacks of almost meatless bones which the gentlemen 
eyed with a most ludicrous air of apology when we 
unexpectedly appeared. They sat there, elbows on 
the table, their faces resting on their hands, one or 
two of them smoking, all silent. To one who had 
known the past fastidiousness of the Serbian officer, 
the picture was indeed an epitome, but a wicked grin 
spread over the Captain's face. 

"M'sieur," he said to me, "I have invited you to 
dine with me. On the way I have the delight and 
honor to exhibit my kennels !" His brother officers 
replied with as good as he sent, however, and after 
a little we went away laughing, the Captain vastly 
amused at having invited a guest to a dinner that 
did not appear. Once out in the open again under 
the cold Montenegrin stars, because we knew it was 
useless to seek a repast that night, we contented 
ourselves with gastronomic memories of the city of 
cities. 

"Ah, to be on the boulevards again, to smell Paris 
once more!" exclaimed the Captain. "To quietly 
sit at a table all white and gleaming in a little cafe 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAJNIE 399 

clean as heaven, to glance at the radiant ladies — 
a droite, a gauche — as one selects a civilized repast, 
to see the passing crowds so great and happy whom 
pleasure and not war have brought together, to hve 
like a human being, mon ami, to breathe once more 
the blessed air of France!" His perfect French 
turned to a shout of guttural Serbian as he hailed 
a passing friend and together we sought solace in 
Turkish coffee. I hope that for many years to 
come he and his comrade cavaliers may live to 
breathe that blessed air and carry to their indomi- 
table, struggling country the culture and the fine 
intellectual wealth of that incomparable nation. 

I saw King Nikolas come riding through Pod- 
goritze next day on a milk-white horse. He wore a 
gorgeous costume with silken sashes, and gold- 
embossed pistols and saber, many medals, and gold 
embroidery. His gaze was very stern, and he 
frowned heavily but returned our salute cordially 
enough. Even then he had issued a proclamation 
saying that his subjects must not be alarmed if the 
court were moved from Cettinje, and preparation 
for this was already under way. 

After two or three days horse wagons were pro- 
cured for us to go to Plavnitze to take the boat to 
Scutari. It required four hours, and most of the 



400 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

time we were facing a freezing wind, so that we 
were numb when we arrived at the large warehouses 
near the boat dock. The boat had been expected 
to be waiting for us, but it did not come until nearly 
noon next day. We had brought virtually no food, 
thinking to reach Scutari by night, so that the delay 
was more than inconvenient. 

As night came on, the authorities were persuaded 
to open up one of the immense empty storehouses 
for us — "us" being the regular unit with the addi- 
tion of eight or ten members of an English hospital 
that had been working in Montenegro. The roof 
of our abode was very high and full enough of holes 
to afford fine ventilation, and the floor was of con- 
crete, so we soon had a large camp-fire going. It 
proved to be one of the most comfortable camps we 
had, the feeling that our troubles were nearing the 
end adding much to our content. However, we 
were ravenous. Some one had found two hams, 
which they bought without very close scrutiny, and 
these with a little bread were our supper. Unfor- 
tunately one of the hams was distinctly the worse 
for age, but some of the party were hungry enough 
to try the doubtful experiment of separating the 
good bits from the less good, and during the night 
more than one suffered. That evening we sat long 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 401 

around the fire, the Irish girls singing songs and all 
of us telling the biggest lies we knew, thus beguiling 
ourselves into forgetting for a little the thmgs 
behind us. 

Next morning while we waited for the boat on the 
pier, Lieutenant-Commander Kerr arrived with his 
party of marines. I have already described this 
plucky little band who refused to talk about their 
troubles, although suffering so terribly. It does, 
indeed, seem strange to me that with such magnifi- 
cent fighting material England has so far been dis- 
tinctly unfortunate. When the boat came we still 
delayed until the arrival of a general and his staff, 
who were going to cross with us. During this time 
we heard heavy firing down the lake from the direc- 
tion of Scutari, and in a little while saw an Austrian 
aeroplane coming toward us, flying at a great 
height. There were no anti-aircraft guns about, 
and nothing but a few rifles to protect us if he saw 
fit to bomb the narrow pier, which was crowded 
full of Serbian soldiers, the marines, and ourselves. 
On nearing us he came quite low and circled about 
several times, but flew away without dropping a 
bomb, but not without causing a good deal of ex- 
citement because we were in a pretty bad position 
to be bombed. If he had some bomhs, but re- 



402 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

f rained, I bow to him here; if he wished for some, 
I hope he dropped into the lake. 

Shortly before the boat sailed an Austrian pris- 
oner crawled down the pier toward us. This 
is not an exaggeration, certainly he apparently 
crawled. Every movement showed great exhaus- 
tion, and he bent far over so that his hands almost 
swept the ground. Steadfastly his face was turned 
to earth, though his head oscillated with a swinging 
glance from side to side. AVlien we did catch a 
glimpse of his features, we saw only a grayish bunch 
of matted beard, caked and tangled with filth, which 
spread up to meet shaggy locks of almost snow- 
white hair. His mouth remained continually open. 
Mechanically he was searching the ground for food 
in a manner startlingly identical with that of a 
hungry dog or a pig. On a pile of loose stones 
there were some small pieces of maize bread which 
had fallen as some one ate a hunk of the crumbling 
concoction that the JNIontenegrins make. The Aus- 
trian prisoner came upon this find. While a nurse 
was canvassing the crowd to see if any bread re- 
mained among us, this creature, who had ceased to 
be human, searched the pile of stones through and 
through, tearing them apart and, as the crumbs 
ever sifted lower, scattering them with a studious 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 403 

attention to the minutest particle which they hid 
that seemed to me more eloquent than any frenzy. 
A little bread was found for him and he managed 
to get on the boat. If he had not, he would have 
died, for it takes two days for strong men to go 
around the lake. 

In his eyes, and in the dumb glances of how many 
thousands more, we read the deep damnation of 
those responsible for war, whoever they may be. 
By most trustworthy estimates I know now that 
more than forty-four tliousand Austrian prisoners 
died from starvation and exposure on that eight- 
weeks retreat, and the most of them, of course, 
"played out" in the mountains. With all the sin- 
cerity that I can display I want to bear witness to 
the truly admirable attitude of these prisoners as I 
saw them. It is true that many thousands of them 
were Austro- Serbs, whose hearts were with their 
kinsmen, but in no instance did I see one of them 
guilty of any brutal act, not even when they stood 
in torture at the door of death. Out of the fifty 
thousand that Serbia held, six thousand came, more 
dead than alive, to the sea. 

At last we scrambled on board and our argosy 
weighed anchor. It was a strange, hybrid craft, 
built originally for a sail-boat, but since endowed 



404 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

with a reluctant gasolene motor that pushed us 
leisurely through the placid water, so placid that 
the mountains under the surface seemed as real and 
solid as those that formed the shores. There was 
scarcely more than standing-room on the entire 
boat, only infrequently an opportunity to sit, and 
the odor was terrific. We had a good many 
wounded soldiers on board, as well as the many 
uninjured ones whose condition was far from 
pleasant. 

In some miraculous manner (for there were 
many more important who could find no room) a 
wild Gipsy had sneaked on board wuth his battered 
violin. He was merely a shambling skeleton 
draped with brown skin, his jet eyes sunken deep 
beneath his brows, his cheeks hollow and rough as 
potato peel. As soon as we got a little way from 
land he began playing weird, squeaky things that, 
under the circumstances, were worse than the very 
worst ghost-story I ever heard. The cruise of the 
Ancient Mariner certainly knew no more grotesque 
hours than those we spent in the deathly stillness 
of Scutari Lake among the tottering remnants of 
men who had played to the world one of its greatest 
masques of human misery. The battered little ship 
loaded with its desperate freight glided with 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAJ^IE 407 

scarcely a gurgle across the wild, silent, beautiful 
lake. We on board only mumbled and mostly stood* 
facing southward, straining our eyes toward Scu- 
tari, or now and then scanning the sky to see if the 
aeroplane were not returning to sink us. Inces- 
santly this wild, brown phantom rasped wilder 
music from his fiddle. Hour after hour we stood 
thus until we ached in every muscle, until the stench 
and misery everywhere visible was enough to drive 
one insane. Sometimes we were near the gray 
shores and cruel, barren peaks, again far enough 
away for distance to tone down the rugged land. 
We became unutterably fatigued and hungry and, 
as the afternoon waned, veiy cold, for a high wind 
which nearly stopped our progress swept down upon 
us and froze us to the bone. We huddled even 
closer to each other to keep warm and looked every 
minute to see Scutari — where there was a British 
consul and food and rest and news from home, per- 
haps. The sun set about five o'clock and left a cold, 
wind-swept sky, a sheet of orange doubled by the 
lake. About eight we fought in the teeth of the 
wind around a sharply jutting shoulder of solid rock 
and came upon a cluster of lights, above which we 
could discern the mass of the huge ancient fortress 
of Scutari. 



408 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

The port affords no landing facilities worth 
speaking of. The landing must be made in tipsy, 
leaky boats domineered by savage specimens, two 
to a boat, who doubtless would also answer to the 
adjective tipsy. A drove of these farouche boat- 
men wabbled out in their terrifying craft to meet us. 
They were like so many flitting chips on the dark, 
wind-tossed water. Nikola, who had been sent 
ahead to herald our coming, was commanding them, 
in strong, uncomplimentary tones that the high 
wind split up and bore to us in screeching frag- 
ments. But they were a stupid, unruly lot, and his 
admonitions continued to explode fast and furious, 
the expletives flying by our ears like whistling 
shrapnel. Upon the ship the human tangle ap- 
peared inextricable. No one could do more than 
face about. It seemed as if we must be shoveled 
off like so much coal. But the freezing, starving 
soldiers were far from inanimate. No sooner had 
the boats come near us than these soldiers began to 
scramble for places near the rail where rope ladders 
hung down to the water. The resulting confusion 
was like a herd of badly frightened cattle in a corral. 
The whole crowd was rocked this way and that, and, 
only because there was not room to fall, did many 
of the women escape being trampled. This state 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 409 

of affairs was aided by the darkness, which made it 
impossible to see how anything should be done. 
The crowd began to shout, Nikola and his crew took 
up the crj^ so that the very stars knew we were land- 
ing at Scutari. 

When finally the boats which Nikola had reserved 
for our use were brought up to the ship, most of 
them were on the starboard side while nearly all 
our party had congregated to port. It was next 
to impossible to cross the ship. I happened to be 
by the starboard rail where I had been all day, and, 
as an apparition from the watery confusion below, 
I saw Nikola ascending the rope-ladder. He cried 
to me to come down at once and help hold one of 
the boats to the side of the ship. I descended, 
holding by one hand, with the other grasping my 
rucksack that contained my films and notes. I got 
into a boat with an Englishman. The men had 
crowded their boats so close together that it was 
not possible for those next the ship to push off when 
filled, and this came near causing a complete debacle 
for our expedition. 

No sooner was I seated in the stern of the boat 
than soldiers began pouring over the ship's side into 
it, dropping several feet and landing with an im- 
pact that each time threatened disaster. In two 



410 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

minutes we had all we could possibly take and the 
water was in a few inches of overflowing the gun- 
wales. I yelled to the boatmen to push off, but 
that was foolish because we were hemmed in and 
could not move an inch except straight down. A 
wave dashed us with freezing water and a good deal 
slopped into the bottom of the boat. Dressed as 
I was, I did not believe I could swim a dozen strokes 
and the Englishman felt likewise. The rest of us 
were soldiers. The women were all on the other 
side and we could hear sounds which told us there 
was trouble over there too. Seeing their comrades 
dropping on to the mass of boats below, the men 
above followed like goats going over a wall, quite 
unconcerned about where they hit. In spite of 
our imprecations, a young giant whom we knew 
would sink us in an instant climbed half-way over 
the rail and hung pendant above us. Shouting did 
no good. It had become a heedless stampede of 
men whose nerves, Heaven knows, should already 
have been shattered. We looked around to choose 
another boat into which to jump before that human 
sword of Damocles should drop, but all of those 
adjoining us were already full! I remember how 
I mentally bade farewell to my cherished films and 
note-book, and believe I would have di'awn my 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 411 

automatic and shot that hanging idiot if I had not 
seen that he would drop then and sink us anyway. 
He let himself over a little more and kicked his 
bare feet right in my face as I stood up cursing him. 
The reader will probably not believe it, but those 
bare heels and George Bernard Shaw saved us. I 
solemnly affirm it. In the instant that he dangled 
before my eyes an incident in which the shocking 
young hero of "Fanny's First Play" chases the 
startling young heroine up-stairs pinching her an- 
kles came vividly to me. With all the venom I 
could muster I got that man just above the heel 
with my finger and thumb and there I stuck. He 
howled as if he had been ham-strung — he must 
have thought somebody had knifed him — and jerked 
himself back over the rail in a highly gratifying 
manner. Two more pairs of legs already threat- 
ened us, but we had found the charm. We quickly 
pinched them back on board, for the soldiers' opanki 
offered no protection against our method of attack. 
For fully ten minutes we maintained our rocking, 
perilous neutrality until the swearing Achilles 
gang above us became so ludicrous we enjoyed it. 
Their opanki-sheathed extremities certainly proved 
our opportunity. Altogether it was a unique land- 
ing, unlike any I had ever made. 



412 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

After every one of the unit had landed without 
any serious mishaps, though with several narrow 
escapes, we walked behind the craz}?- Albanian carts 
that carried our luggage, for more than half an 
hour through the streets of Scutari. How civilized 
they looked to us, those streets which to the traveler 
from Italy seem so primitive! Our tramp ended 
before the wide wooden doors of a court-yard upon 
which we read a placard — the first instance I had 
seen of official British aid for the women, except at 
Mitrovitze the special train that had carried a hun- 
dred and twenty of the nurses for three hours on 
their way to the sea under the guidance of a volun- 
teer Serb leader. The sign read "Mission An- 
gJaise/' and underneath, ''Sir' Ralph Paget/' It 
was, indeed, pleasant for the nurses to find within 
even bare rooms, but somewhat clean, and spread 
with dry hay on which to sleep. It did not seem 
to me that such arrangements would have been 
impossible along most stages of the retreat, if some 
definite plan had been arranged and followed. 
That night a hot stew of meat and potatoes was 
brought to us with bread and coffee. We had had 
nothing but the doubtful ham and a bit of tinned 
mutton since leaving Podgoritze thirty-six hours 
before. 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 413 

It was arranged that early next morning we 
should leave for the coast, a two days' journey, to 
take "an American sailing vessel, the Albania/* 
which would carry only the refugees of neutral or 
non-military status. There was deep gloom among 
the young Englishmen. This meant seven days 
march to Durazzo over rough trails where blood- 
thirsty bandits hid. I was the only American in 
the place and as such my immunity from that march 
made me the recij^ient of much congratulation. I 
searched for an American consul but as yet our new 
diplomatic representative to the Serbian Govern- 
ment had not arrived at Scutari. 

In a way I was sorry not to have a longer stay 
in Scutari. It was exciting and instructive to 
watch the broken Serbian Government reshaping 
itself there, to view the fagged army as it sank down 
into camps that, desolate though they were, prom- 
ised — so the men vainly thought — a surcease from 
the suffering of the past months, a chance to rest, 
wash, and feed. No such thing happened, but 
when I was at Scutari people believed it might. 
"The poor devils, to think they will have to camp 
around here the rest of the winter with almost no 
wood!" one officer said mournfully to me. Not 
even such cold comfort as that was vouched to them. 



414 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

Each clear day without fail there was an aeroplane 
bombardment which did small damage, but served 
to remind the army that their relentless enemies 
were hounding them still, and though balked for a 
moment by the mountains yet cherished hopes of 
reaching them. It may also have been a gentle 
hint to Essad Pasha of how long is the Teuton's 
arm and how ready it would be to strike any who 
offered a refuge to their prey. But whatever the 
Albanian ruler's faults, he showed himself not fool 
enough to be persuaded that a precarious capital 
in the hand is worth the good-will of inevitable 
victors. 

"Will they come here, do you think?" was a ques- 
tion on every tongue. A winter campaign in Mon- 
tenegro and Albania seemed almost incredible, yet 
I believe those in authority foresaw it. The great 
deciding factor was food and ammunition, and these 
the Italians seemed unable to transport in any 
safety across the Adriatic. The reason, however, 
may have been deeper than that; Italy may very 
well have wished only to hold Avlona and to let the 
war take its course with Serbia and Montenegro. 
The eastern littoral of the Adriatic has been for 
ages a diplomatic chessboard, and there is no reason 
to beheve now that deep-laid schemes for its domi- 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 415 

nation are not going forward. Whatever the 
causes, the results are obvious enough. The addi- 
tional march from Scutari to Durazzo cost Serbia 
many thousands of her precious men. Deadly as 
the deadliest fire was that intolerable extra burden 
coming at the end of their miraculous retreat. As 
one more reason why the whole world loves France 
with a personal affection it should be noted here 
that, far removed from Corfu and fighting the 
"lion's share" — happy phrase — of war on the west- 
ern front, France has shouldered the care of those 
thousands of shattered heroes who, while two of 
them stand together, will ever be known as the 
Serbian army. From San Giovanni to Durazzo, 
from Christmas to the middle of January, was a 
via dolorosa more terrible than shell-torn trenches 
full of bodies and at the end. was the island of Vido 
about which ^Ir. Grouitch, under secretary of 
foreign affairs for Serbia, tells in an account in the 
"New York Evening Sun": 

I went to visit the island where are the sick soldiers. 
The Greeks call it the island of Vido, but the Serbs call 
it now the Island of the Devil, or more often, the Island 
of Death. To that island are sent the soldiers who are 
suffering not from any particular disease, but are sim- 
ply starved and exhausted, so that they need, not only 
food, to recover but care. 



416 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

Food they get and very often they die as soon as they 
take it. Care and nursing there is, unfortunately, none, 
and many die from want of it who would otherwise live. 

The sights one sees there are terrible, and it would 
need a Dantesque pen to describe them. The island is a 
small one opposite Corfu. 

It has only one building which serves as a habitation for 
doctors and the personnel. The rest is barren lands and 
ruins of old fortifications destroyed by the English be- 
fore they gave the island to Greece. 

As soon as I arrived near enough to have a good view 
of the shore, I found that the name "death" had been 
rightly given to the island. A few paces from the land- 
ing was a small inclosure screened with tent sheets, behind 
which the corpses were piled. A few meters away was 
a large boat tied to a sort of wooden jetty already full 
of bodies, and on the jetty two men were unloading a 
stretcher by simply turning it over and throwing another 
corpse atop the others. 

And that operation was being performed regularly, one 
stretcher following another, corpse after corpse falling 
from a height of two meters into the boat until there was 
such a pile that no more could be taken, and the boat- 
load with legs and arms protruding here and there, some 
hanging overboard, was taken to the sea which became 
the grave for those unfortunate people who had suffered 
so much and had died just as they thought they were 
safe. 

There are one hundred buried that way every day. 
They die not from sickness, but simply because they are 
so tired, so exhausted physically, so famished, that it is 
only with the most careful nursing, by treating them like 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 417 

children, putting them in warm beds, etc., that one could 
save them. But tents are few and beds are fewer. 

There is no wood to burn and therefore no fires are 
made. Some drag themselves to a tree, where they sit 
and sleep and do not wake again. They have starved 
too long and cannot support food any more. 

The Avorst sight was under three or four tents, old, 
rickety, dirty, big and black, as if in harmony with the 
sights they covered. In each of them from forty to sixty 
soldiers were lying, not in beds, not on straw, not on the 
earth, but in the mud, because there were neither beds nor 
straw. 

Our good intentions to get away early from Scu- 
tari were thwarted by several accidents. As- 
sembled at the British consulate, we waited for 
hours before the carts that were to carry the luggage 
and the nurses came. Here we saw Admiral Trou- 
bridge again for a few minutes. He had arrived 
shortly before by way of Albania and had had to 
walk most of the way, but he seemed quite as deb- 
onnaire as ever; and, because he had been able to 
secure supplies for his men, was cheerful. When 
our carts did come, we filed out through intermin- 
able muddy streets to the end of the town and there 
a halt was called. 

There was no one definitely in charge of the 
party, and none seemed able to tell why we had 
stopped. Nikola had been sent ahead, while Dr. 



418 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

■V 

Curcin had stayed behind to see about the unit's 
passports and money matters. The British consul 
was supposed to have made arrangements. For 
three hours we stood where the drivers had suddenly 
deserted us, taking ten of the carts with them. 
When they returned they had enough hay for the 
round trip of four days. Under the best conditions, 
it is two full days' journey by ox-cart from Scutari 
to Medua, but now the roads were in a frightful 
condition. In places the wide Bo j ana threatened 
to overflow them utterly. Everywhere was deep 
mud, and frequently for hundreds of yards 
stretched continuous ponds. So an early start was 
imperative if we were to reach the half-way village 
where Nikola hoped to secure shelter. Our being 
delayed brought about a series of adventures and 
at the last almost caused us a cruel disappointment. 
It was about two o'clock when we got under way 
again and a cold, driving rain had set in which 
soaked the women, perched on top the groaning 
cart between those tremendous wheels, the riddle of 
which the bottomless mud soon explained to us. 
They sat upon the hay, which soon became like a 
sponge, making quite as uncomfortable a seat as 
can well be imagined. 




I i\-^ 



/*■ 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 421 

The rain continued steadily until late afternoon, 
when the clouds broke into a sunset of marvelous 
splendor that deluged the ruddy crags about Scu- 
tari with royal purple shades and splotches of yel- 
low light, that glorified our road into a ribbon of 
iridescent reflection leading straight away westward 
to the blessed sea and rest, that transmuted the 
swollen Bo j ana to a rushing flood of gold, all echoes 
of the beauty of the sky. Although we were soaked 
to the skin and tramped in the midst of a savage 
wilderness at nightfall with no habitation in sight 
and knowing not at all where we would sleep, the 
scene laid its magic upon us. We were now tra- 
versing the perfectly flat bottom of the valley, cov- 
ered by tall, withered grasses fragrant with the 
rain and bending under the breeze that raced over 
it. Disregarding the distant mountains, it had the 
quality of a windy Dutch landscape under clouds 
that were fading to dun and ashen, and brought 
a sense of isolation from the world, of having for the 
instant ceased to be a part of it, of watching it as 
from a star. Always in the mind of each of us was 
Serbia, the tragic manner of her death, the great 
beauty of her primitive heroism. Already "The 
Retreat" was merging into a unit of the past, into a 



422 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

finished experience whose memory tinged our every 
thought, as in fact it has continued unceasingly 
to do. 

At Scutari grewsome accounts had come to us of 
what befell many refugees and weakened soldiers 
on the route through Albania from Prizrend. 
Several high officers, including a French major, had 
been murdered, as well as some fifteen hundred 
soldiers and many hundreds of civilians. Although 
from Durazzo, Essad Pasha was doing all in his 
power to succor and protect the Serbs, he was un- 
able to control the wild northern tribesmen when 
once the all-pervasive mirest of war had penetrated 
their mountains. People had their throats slashed 
as they slept simply for the rings on their fingers. 
In narrow defiles they were cut off and shot down, 
and in lonely villages, stopping for the night, their 
huts were surrounded and all were butchered. As 
a consequence we did not view with too much faith 
and complacency the twenty-five outlandish beings 
who came along to drive the oxen. The Montene- 
grin Government sent along with us two young ser- 
geants as guides and protectors. They were surly, 
ill-humored fellows, inexpressibly lazy and utterly 
nonchalant about everything except their own com- 
fort. They seemed to be frightened themselves, for 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 423 

when night came they began to insist that we stop 
right where we were in the fields without shelter and 
roost on the carts until dawn. This did not seem 
to promise more safety and certainly not as much 
comfort as pushing on, so we refused to stop. The 
cloud-rack had blown away almost entirely now and 
a brilliant moon, just beginning to wan, rose after 
a while and made our traveling easier. Also the 
road had become firmer, and while we waded in 
water continuously we did not stick very much. 

We tramped along for two or three hours after 
the moon rose. Just ahead of our partj^ three 
Englishmen walked, the guards came along in the 
middle, and a young medical student from Edin- 
burgh whom we had met at Podgoritze brought up 
the rear with me. This young man was named 
Bobby Burns and was half- American. Walking 
along in the wilderness together we amused our- 
selves discussing New York, books, the theater, 
and settled quite easily many profound social prob- 
lems. Under the surface of this chatter, however, 
we considered with more or less interest every dark 
place on the road. He was very soft-spoken and 
polite, even to a fault, and his diction was always 
most polished. His gentle manner and his ahnost 
girlish face made him seem to have just stepped out 



424 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

from some sequestered school. As a matter of fact, 
he had been connected with an army division for 
months, had undergone terrific strain, hardship and 
exposure, had witnessed many horrible things while 
retreating with the army, about all of which he 
spoke with a cool detachment that I envied. No 
trace of the ordeal was on him, only always his 
thought was for the comfort and safety of the 
women, and his good humor unfailing. I liked to 
think that he was English, and I liked even more to 
know that he was American, too. 

Between nine and ten o'clock when the drivers 
were just about ready to mutiny, apparently, we 
heard a shout ahead and Nikola came to meet us, 
saying that he had got us shelter for the night in 
a tiny village, for it would not be possible to reach 
the half-way station before far into the night. To 
stop meant that it would hardly be feasible to reach 
San Giovanni di ISIedua next day, but we knew of 
nothing to make us think a little further delay would 
matter. 

The "village" consisted of a half-dozen huts. 
The forty women were to sleep all together in a fair- 
sized room in the largest house, while guards were 
to sleep outside the door. We men shared another 
room at a little distance. The head of the family 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 425 

village, at whose hut the women were to sleep, was 
a villainous old chap of amazing age, who boasted 
dozens of sons and dozens-times-dozens grandsons, 
all of whom congregated around to watch us. I 
could n't imagine where they all came from. They 
poked around our luggage in the most naively in- 
quisitive manner and had a disconcerting habit of 
sitting tailor-fashion and staring straight at one 
for ten minutes without winking an eye, stern and 
unsmiling. They were, indeed, a rummy crowd to 
descend into at ten in the evening in search of shel- 
ter. They appeared cold, haughty, and distrustful, 
although they committed no overt act of hostility. 
When we began to "feed" before turning in, the 
old mummy walked calmly in, sat down among us, 
and stared and fingered us to his heart's content, 
while his clan packed the porch outside. He spoke 
a little Serbian, but his Albanian no one of our 
Serbs could understand. Stepping out of this 
room suddenly, I found the crowd investigating 
our baggage which was on the porch. Their de- 
meanor was such that I thought it best not to yell 
at them, but I went over and sat down on my bag, 
whereupon the bunch formed round me in a half- 
circle and stared me out of countenance, not utter- 
ing a sound, imtil they became for me a pack of 



426 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

coyotes sitting on their haunches with their tongues 
hanging out. 

Then a curious thing happened. The old fellow 
came out. Nikola had evidently impressed upon 
him the importance of leaving Enghsh people 
alone, and as a matter of fact he eyed us a bit dis- 
dainfully. My cowboy hat took his eye and that 
meant that he had to touch it or he would die. He 
shuffled over, hfted it ofip my head, and examined it. 
"Engleske •' he murmured, using the Serbian word 
to me. "Amerikanske," I rephed with a result that 
indeed surprised me. He and all his innumerable 
progeny showed the keenest interest at once, and 
smilingly gathered around me, saying grotesque 
words which I took to be kindnesses. They patted 
me all over, and the ancient patriarch thrusting his 
savage face — it was not so bad in its way — right 
into mine, repeated in a voice of greatest interest 
and cordiahty, "Amerikanske, Amerikanske — 
hraatr ("American brother"), and again he began 
patting me until I felt like a patty-cake. He of- 
fered tobacco, and I produced some dried figs. 
From then on I felt their attitude had changed to- 
ward us. 

It does seem strange to me that the only time in 
my life when American citizenship yer se brought 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAJNIE 427 

me the slightest consideration should have been 
among a clan of semi-savages in the middle of a 
howling Albanian wilderness. In many thousands 
of miles of traveling throughout western and south- 
ern Europe and m the Balkans, I have always 
counted myself lucky if I found my passport at 
par; to have it appear at a premium is an expe- 
rience from which I have not yet recovered. I think 
through jNIontenegi'o some rumors of America as a 
land of w41d liberty had come to them, and the Al- 
banian loves wild liberty. Through misunder- 
standing my country, he liked me. That at any 
rate is the only explanation I can devise. 

The night passed away for me in a great de- 
fensive battle with husky Albanian vermin, punc- 
tuated by a constant drip-drip of filthy raindi-ops 
that leaked through the rotten roof in such quan- 
tities it seemed impossible to escape them — all the 
more as one did not have a wide choice of resting- 
places, the floor being carpeted with prostrate 
natives, men, women, and children. "Sunny Jim," 
the little Serbian orphan boy who came along with 
us, found a corner near me, and in his dreams would 
murmur things I could not understand, but in a 
childish voice that was ^\Tetched enough. Once 
when he w^as very quiet and I thought at last he 



428 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

was fast asleep I saw tears trickling down his still 
babyish face. I had never suspected him of the 
shghtest sentiment. He had seemed so wild and 
tough, full of high spirits, and enjoying the excite- 
ment of the march. In the horrible upheaval, con- 
fusion, and carnage of the retreat from the northern 
frontiers, he had lost his family — his father had 
been shot — and at thirteen was thrown upon his 
own resources in a situation that might well try the 
nerves of a strong man. To see him weeping 
silently in the night, when he thought no one was 
looking, gripped the -throat and made one realize 
even more than the bodies by the roadside the real 
tragedy of war. I knew if I tried to console him, it 
would only humiliate him — he already fancied him- 
self a man. I never intimated to him or any one 
that I had caught him off his guard. 

Dr. INIay and Nikola had had a great argument 
as to how far we should go next day. Nikola held 
that it would be foolish and unnecessary to try to 
reach Medua in one day, but Dr. May said the unit 
must try it. I think it was nothing short of an in- 
spiration on her part. She had no reason to believe 
that a day more would make any difference, but she 
held to her purpose. So at four next morning we 
were up and at five our twenty-five carts creaked 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 429 

down a swampy lane to the main road to begin the 
last day's march — the end of an eight weeks' jaunt 
for the women, during which they had tramped 
about three hundred and fifty miles. Full day- 
light found us two or three miles on our way, track- 
ing over perfectly level ground but close to the 
rocky hills that border the Bo j ana valley. Moun- 
tain climbing was finished for most of us, but an 
accident gave three Englishmen, three nurses, and 
myself one more occasion to test our Alpine 
prowess. Quite by mistake we took a short-cut 
that led for miles by mere goat trails over the 
mountains, but which saved a long distance. 

Several of us had pushed ahead of the carts and 
coming to a fork in the road confidently took the 
one that seemed most traveled, and led in the right 
direction. For a few miles this continued to be a 
good road, but then it climbed to a decayed village 
where two thirds of the houses, at least, were un- 
tenanted and tumbling to pieces. A Httle farther 
along it suddenly turned into a mountain trail. 
From this point the other road could be seen far 
across the valley below us, so that we were con- 
vinced that our path was a short-cut which would 
lead eventually into the main road. The nurses 
had taken a rest perhaps a mile behind, and it oc- 



430 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

curred to me that when they came to this spot, they 
would be at a loss to know whether to take the path 
or return many weary miles to the other way. So 
I returned quickly and brought them along — they 
were asleep under a tree — while the others went for- 
ward. For hours we climbed the steep hills and 
wished heartily that we had taken the longer route. 
Doubts began to come and we found no trace of the 
Englishmen. 

We had no food with us and when in mid-after- 
noon we did emerge into the road again we had no 
way of knowing whether the caravan was ahead or 
behind. However, we could not afford to hnger, 
so went on at once very hungry and chagrined. 
One of the women was so dead tired, she could 
scarcely walk at all. In the late afternoon we 
came upon some soldiers who told us that an "Eng- 
leske mission" had gone past them. This made us 
want to push on all the faster, but later we found 
out that they were mistaken. 

At sunset we came to the long bridge across the 
Bojana at Alessio. On the other end stood the 
main town, and soldiers of Essad Pasha in out- 
landish uniforms were parading up and down the 
farther half of the bridge, for the river marked the 
boundary of Essad's doubtful sway. In the center 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 431 

of the road, we spied Nikola calmly waiting for the 
caravan to come along. We told him what we had 
done and he said we must be several hours ahead of 
the main party, and he added, as if it were nothing 
at all, that San Giovanni di Medua was just one 
hour of our walking away. A steamer, he told us, 
was waiting there to take us every one to Italy! 
That was all he knew. It is only after living the 
life which I have tried to picture in this account, 
only after doing without everything that civilization 
gives to make existence less of a dog fight, that one 
could get the full flavor of that announcement. 
Italy ten hours away! Where there was clean, 
fresh food in unlimited quantities, where one could 
eat, eat, eat — that is what we thought of — to reple- 
tion, then go to sleep in a bed until time to eat again, 
and where, oh, dream of ecstasy, one could have a 
boiling bath in a gleaming tub! Remember that 
for four months before the retreat began, we had 
been living under what we then thought terribly 
primitive conditions. Add to this the swampy, 
cornfield camps, the cold, the dirt and vermin, the 
hunger, the limitless and continuous horror, the 
anxiety which a four-months' lack of any news had 
brought, and the fear that the Adriatic would at 
last prove an insurmountable obstacle — then you 



432 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

can see what a steamer waiting to take us all to 
Italy meant. We could smell the sea in the gentle 
wind that came up the rough road to meet us, and 
the widening river presaged the beach soon to come 
in sight. 

Night had now fallen, but an immense red moon 
soon bulged over the hills which we had left behind 
and stood — majestic sight — mirrored a hundred 
times in the endless mud puddles through which we 
splashed. Each of us strained our eyes and ears 
to be the first to hail the sea. A small cavalcade 
came splashing toward us, and soon we were halted 
by a British officer who, with his comrades, was at 
Medua seeing to the landing of supplies and the 
like. He asked where the rest of the party was 
and upon hearing that they were far behind ex- 
pressed anxiety that they would not catch the boat. 
It had only come in that morning and was sailing 
before midnight, so as to be somewhat out of the 
torpedo zone by daylight. There had not been a 
boat for a week, and Heaven only knew when there 
would be another! This appeared strange to us, 
but soon we were to see for ourselves a grewsome 
explanation. 

Only a few minutes after the officers rode on, we 
came upon a rocky spur of hills along the face of 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAISIE 433 

which the rude road twined. Looking down from 
this point we discovered immediately beneath us a 
reed-grown estuary, so untroubled, like dull-green 
glass, that for a moment we thought it simply an 
inland pond until looking westward we saw it ex- 
pand into a shoreless ocean of silver, and faintly 
we heard a muffled lapping on the sand. After our 
three-hundred-and-fifty-mile promenade we had 
come to the sea, and how easily the smooth un- 
broken water carried one's thoughts endless miles 
home ! Straight ahead only a little way, the sparse 
lights of San Giovanni were visible close by the 
beach and up on the cliffs behind. Having passed 
two large army camps, we came through a short 
defile to the little bay. An even swell lifted the 
water and sent soft, winding lines of shining foam 
along the beach, but the surface of the harbor was 
smooth and oily and, at first, seemed unbroken ex- 
cept for the small steamer riding at anchor two 
hundred yards from shore. Soon, however, we no- 
ticed that the bay was spotted with funnels and 
mast-tips that protruded a few feet above the water, 
and a good deal of flotsam was strewn along the 
sand. That brightly lighted steamer was an- 
chored among a veritable cemetery of ships, and 
the wrecks' gaunt hands reached up on every side 



434 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

of her. Upon the white sand we saw a giant cigar 
ghstening moistly in the moonhght which, on closer 
acquaintance, became a very business-like Austrian 
torpedo. Failing to explode, it had been washed 
there after its venomous comrades had sent down 
eleven ships within twenty minutes — ships loaded 
with food, every pound of which would have saved 
a life. Such had been the fate of the last cargo 
brought from Italj^ eight days before. No wonder 
boats did not come often, no wonder hundreds of 
nurses had been waiting almost a week there, not 
knowing if another boat would ever come. Twelve 
hours away was Brindisi, Italy's great naval base, 
but two hours away was Cattaro and Austrian sub- 
marines. 

If ever there was a perfect final scene to any 
tragedy, San Giovanni di JNIedua was an adequate 
finish to the life we had lived. It is only a few 
stone huts on the side of cliffs too rocky to support 
vegetation. There is a tiny pier and a few small 
warehouses, a goat-run that does service as a street, 
and that is all. Everybody had already gone on 
board when we arrived. Early in the day Sir 
Ralph had arranged for the ship to take all to 
Brindisi. In the late afternoon every one had em- 
barked, so we found no one expecting us, appar- 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 435 

ently. When Sir Ralph heard we had arrived, his 
secretary came ashore and told us where to get some 
bread, and said that all should come on board as 
soon as the rest arrived, or sooner, if the nurses 
would. Under no circumstances could the boat be 
held. About ten-thirty the carts began arriving 
and the unit started to embark without having had 
time for food, or scarcely to draw breath. They 
had been traveling steadily since four in the morn- 
ing and were nearer dead than alive. 

Most of the carts soon arrived, but the one carry- 
ing my pictures and notes did not come. Finally 
all the others came in and I was told that this par- 
ticular cart had had a breakdown. It was then 
eleven o'clock and every one said that I should not 
miss the boat for there was no telling when another 
might come. I was determined, however, to be left 
rather than abandon my records after all those 
weeks. At eleven-twenty it came creaking in. I 
had gone down the road to meet it, and snatching 
my bag, I raced for a rowboat, jumped in, and got 
on the ship just before she weighed anchor. 

From her deck where there was only standing 
room — almost as bad as the Scutari boat — we 
looked back at the pier, black with a mob of refugees 
who clamored to get on the boat but who, for rea- 



436 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

sons I know not, were not allowed to. We had, 
perhaps, all we dared to carry. They shouted 
there, and some fought, while long lines of soldiers 
carried the sui3plies, which the ship had brought, 
from the shore to places of safety on the hillside, 
for at dawn they feared a raid by air and water. 
One line I especially remember seeing before I em- 
barked. They were unloading little square wooden 
boxes filled with gold for the Government. Each 
box held two hundred thousand francs and there 
was wild excitement when one of them disappeared. 
Above the creaking of the anchor-chain, the noise 
of the disappomted mob came to us, and in the half- 
light the restless throngs dotted the white quays 
in ghostly groups, while the funnels of the sunken 
vessels admonished us not yet to be too sure of Ital}^ 
In atmosphere and composition the picture was 
Dore at his weirdest. To leave behind that army 
and that people seemed all at once hke treason and 
desertion, and the knowledge that one could no 
longer be of service to them did not help much. 

Our boat was the ill-fated Brindisi which very 
soon afterward was blown up just outside Medua 
harbor, the hundreds of IMontenegrin soldiers on 
board shooting themselves rather than die b}^ the 
enemy's hand. Had a torpedo found us, the situa- 



3 




WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 439 

tion would not have been pleasant. There were 
about two hundred and fifty women on board, 
French, Russian, and English, and hundreds of sick 
and wounded soldiers and civilians. They lay up- 
on the decks so thick that it was almost impossible 
to move about without treading on them and, as we 
got into rough water on the open sea, fully nine 
tenths of them became violently ill — a horrible scene 
that even the moonlight could not tone down. 

How strange it seemed to be going somewhere 
and not having to walk ! In twelve hours we would 
be in Italy. In that time we moved for all prac- 
tical purposes a thousand years. We came from a 
cold, dreary, desolate land, filled with the dying 
and the dead, from an atmosphere of hopeless gloom 
into a heaven of sunshine and golden fruit, where 
war seemed never to have passed, and repose and 
cleanliness could be known once more. 

On the boat I met the three nurses whom I had 
not seen since Ipek, and I was indeed happy to 
know that they had come through without any 
serious mishaps. Their courage and readiness to 
make the best of things, I shall always remember, 
and I know that none of us will ever forget our 
vagabond days together from Trestenik to Mitro- 
vitze, over the autumn hills and through the far- 



440 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

flung wilderness of the Ibar. Sir Ral^jh, also, came 
to me and courteously thanked me for the insignifi- 
cant aid it had been in my power to render the 
nurses. He said that he regretted not having been 
able to aid us at Mitrovitze. He had had "to think 
of the gi'eatest good to the greatest number and so 
could not remain" with us. It was scarcely his 
presence that we had needed there. A word from 
the official representative of the British Serbian Re- 
lief, asking that the nurses be taken with the others, 
would have been more welcome than his or any 
one's presence with us at that moment. However 
as a lucky chance had made services which I could' 
render valuable enough to "persuade the unit to 
take them on" and we were all right at last, I saw 
no reason to pursue the subject. I still hate to 
think about what those women would have suffered 
if, on the eve of the terrible day on Kossovo, shelter 
and food had not been assured them. I remarked 
that it had been a strenuous time for all of us and 
Sir Ralph heartily agreed. He told me that he 
was "worn out from looking after the women," and 
"that I could have no idea what a burden the care 
of the units had been" to him. Subtle humor to 
meet in an Englishman. 

The Brindisi steamed in the center of a good- 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME Ul 

sized battle squadron. Because of the valuable 
cargo she had brought to Medua, the Italian Gov- 
ernment had furnished a strong convoy. No sooner 
had we left the harbor than the lights of two boats 
appeared to port, and two to starboard, while one 
was ahead of us, and one behind. They kept at a 
distance varying from a quarter to a half-mile. 
When day dawned, we saw that there were five 
Italian torpedo-boat destroyers and one British 
cruiser, the Weymouth. Looking at the latter 
steaming near by to starboard, dull gray on the 
green water and the sunlight picking out her guns, 
one realized under the circumstances the beautiful 
practicability of a battle ship. I was told that thir- 
teen more vessels were around us and that, during 
the night, we had been chased by submarines which 
the strong convoy had scared off. 

On the Brindisi I met again Miss Eden, the head 
of the expedition into Bosnia, where I had been 
when the storm was gathering over Serbia. I had 
seen her faced with very grave and trying situa- 
tions there which had been met in a manner that 
could only call forth admiration. Now she was 
very weak from starvation and suffering, and could 
hardly stand because of frozen feet, but she was al- 
ready full of plans to return with full medical 



442 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

equipment to aid in the preservation of that army 
which we all admired. 

It was about ten-thirty in the morning when we 
came to anchor in Brindisi harbor. So much red- 
tape had to be gone through that not until three 
o'clock did we get on shore and there we were kept 
an hour, not being permitted to enter the town. A 
string of police barred every street and the popu- 
lace came down to stare as if we had been a circus. 
There was no food on the boat and most of our unit 
had been without anything since early morning of 
the preceding day — this, too, when they had made 
that long forced march. No food was brought to 
us and we were not allowed to go in search of any. 
From ten-thirty in the morning to four in the after- 
noon we could even smell the bakeries, but had to 
wait. Finally Sir Ralph arranged for a special 
train to take the whole party straight to Milan, and 
thence to Paris and London. It was the eighteenth 
of December — the nurses would get home for 
Christmas. 

We were led in a gang to the station about an 
hour before the train started, and our rush on the 
station restaurant was a sight to see. Imagine 
what piles of oranges, grapes, apples, and bananas 
looked like to starving people who had seen noth- 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 443 

ing decent to eat for months ; picture the seductive- 
ness of lunch-counter sausages and boxes of sweets 
and dried fruits; think for an instant of tall cold 
glasses of creamy beer and delicious light wines, and 
put down into the midst of it all three hundred 
famished people. When the train came, for thq 
moment the restaurant had become a restaurant in 
name only. 

Enough coaches had not been procured to afford 
seats for more than two thirds of the party, but 
that mattered little to us. On board the INIilan 
Express a weariness which even the excitement of 
going home could not conquer came over us all. 
We lay down on the corridor floors, in the vesti- 
bules, under the seats. Wrapped for the last time 
in our soldier-blankets, we roughed it one more 
night in the midst of civilization. It is indicative 
of my mental state that I took it for granted the 
train was going to Rome, and thence to Milan. I 
intended to stop in Rome. It never occurred to 
me to ask, so when a lot of people stumbled over me 
in the middle of the night as I lay directly in the 
entrance, and I distinguished shouts about changing 
for Rome I was appalled. I did not know whether 
we had passed the junction, or if that were it. My 
movements were merely reflex — due in part to what 



444, WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

had happened in that restaurant — and I tumbled 
out of a window when I could not open the door, 
and sat upon my bag between some tracks, where I 
immediately fell asleep again. The feeling of ab- 
solute indifference as to what under the sun became 
of me was delicious. One train was as good as an- 
other to me, so I climbed on the first one that woke 
me up without worrying to make any inquiry. It 
happened to be a third-class train full of troops re- 
turning from the front on Christmas furlough. 
Some of them spoke English and they all imme- 
diately concluded that I was starving and penni- 
less. I shall not soon forget their generous, whole- 
hearted proffers of food and even money! When 
the guard came through and had the hardihood to 
ask me if I had a ticket or a pass they almost 
mobbed him. These soldiers were magnificently 
equipped and looked so well-cared for and happy, 
they made all the more startling the contrast with 
that other tortured army less than twenty-four 
hours away. 

It would take many pages to record the sensa- 
tions which I underwent on coming back to Rome 
and — a bath! I cannot even enumerate the kind- 
nesses which were extended to me as a "refugee," 
especially by the charming English people and their 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 445 

friends in the hotel where I stopped. The trip 
from Albania had been so rapid that I found my- 
self wondering if I were not blissfully dreaming in 
some mountain hut. Thirty-six hours from the 
time that I was slopping through mire up to my 
knees in a heavy downpour, suffering from hunger 
and fatigue, with no idea when I might get away 
from that horror-stricken land, I was luxuriously 
feeding (I did not lunch or dine, I fed those first 
few days) in a perfectly appointed Rome hotel with 
kind people to talk to — even though I had no shoes ! 
I had arrived on the nineteenth of December, ex- 
actly two months after I had boarded the train at 
Valjevo with the Christitch party to begin the 
Great Retreat. 

Of those days following my arrival I have no 
notes and a very clouded memory. Just as people 
still feel the swaying decks beneath them after 
landing from a long voyage, my mind was still in 
a state of retreat. To all intents and purposes for 
a few days I continued to live the refugee life and 
seldom ceased to feel the cold of Kossovo, the 
hunger of Prizrend, the despair of the mountains. 
The very food that I ate sometimes seemed like 
murder when I thought of the dead at Scutari. 

I wish I could comprehend and record the feel- 



446 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE 

ings of the men at Corfu and Vido to-day. Sit- 
ting around the dinner table on Christmas evening 
— for my new friends' hospitahty had extended so 
far — one of them asked, "What of the soldier of 
the line? Does he still think that the game is 
worth the candle?" 

My mind went back to a dark freezing dawn near 
Prizrend when by the road side I had found a man. 
He lay on a pile of soaking, rotten straw under 
an old cow-shed carpeted with filth, and he was 
wounded. A miserable fire smoldered beside him 
— a fire that might outlast him. To my surprise 
he spoke a little English and we discussed common- 
places, as is the way in desperate circumstances. 
Very near, the Serbian and enemy guns were boom- 
ing in a lively duel. 

"How far away are those guns?" I asked, ex- 
pecting him to answer "an hour," or "a half-hour," 
as is the Serbian custom. But with difficulty, he 
rose on his elbow and looking somewhere beyond me 
he said: 

"Maybe they are a hundred years nearer than 
they were four weeks ago, but not more than a hun- 
dred years !" 

Not more than a hundred years, if any Serb be 
left to drive them out ; and what is a hundred years 



WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 447 

to a nation that has not lost its individuahty through 
"five hundred years of durance"? 

"They do not count the cost," I answered. 
"They are not made that way. They only fight 
and hope." 

As I recall it now, that seems to me the best 
epitome I can give of the Serbian peoj)le. For 
five centuries they have unflinchingly fought and 
hoped. To all who have intimately known them, 
their present misfortune is as the keenest personal 
sorrow. For if a calm and dignified spirit under 
the dreariest of skies, if unfaltering and unquench- 
able patriotism under tests that may well be styled 
supreme, if splendid bravery, and endurance that 
passes understanding, if simple immovable faith in 
a great and simple liberty, if deathless devotion to 
what one conceives as right and honorable, be any 
longer of use in the world, the land of Serbia and 
the national soul of the Serbs is worth preserving. 
They have a bright destiny to which the vast re- 
sources of their beautiful country and the blood of 
their innumerable heroes entitle them, and they 
will be allowed to work it out. This at any rate is 
what the Retreat taught me so clearly that never 
again will I doubt it. 

THE END 



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